


aphelion

by kindclaws



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Bechdel Test Pass, Best Bellarke Work In Progress 2016 Nominee, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Female Friendships, Found Families, Gen, Gratuitous Science Fiction, Grifter AU, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Organized Crime, POV Multiple, Slow Burn, Space Pirates, loosely based on Firefly
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-19
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-05-14 05:19:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 48,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5730898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindclaws/pseuds/kindclaws
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been two years since the spaceship Aphelion mysteriously disappeared, its crew branded by the ARK as traitors to be shot on sight. Jake Griffin was on that ship, and with him, a dangerous secret that could change civilized space forever.</p><p>Now, Clarke wants some answers - and revenge, if she can get it. Bellamy wants a bigger ship - specifically, Clarke's. Wells wants to fix the system his father broke. Octavia wants a little fun. Miller wants everyone to stop making poor life choices. Harper wants to kiss the new girl. And Raven? Well, Raven just wants to blow shit up.</p><p>The universe won't know what's hit it. (Space pirates AU!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Villains On Necessity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: swearing, canon-typical levels of violence, crime. 
> 
> Chapter title taken from King Lear. This week's weather is: [Surface Of The Sun](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em7mzT48J4k) by John Murphy (Sunshine OST).
> 
> Buckle up, it'll be a bumpy ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> _Kings and Queens and Presidents_  
>  _Ministers of Governments_  
>  _Welcome to the future of your world_
> 
> _Through talking heads that took liberties_  
>  _The monkeys learnt to build machines_  
>  _They think they'll get to heaven through the universe_  
>  \- Kidz, Take That (2011)

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **SPACEPORT NINETEEN coined LAFAYETTE, Sector F7-G12. Allegiance: NONE.**

 

  
Raven's first big tinkering project was the ventilation system. Funny, it had seemed like a huge deal at the time, but now she looks back on her monochrome memories of holding up wrenches for the more experienced mechanics and wonders how she ever could have settled for tightening rivets on an ARK still clinging to its glory days.

 _But you didn't settle_ , she reminds herself as she presses through the market crowd, keeping her head down low as broad shoulders and heavyset thugs threaten to push her aside. Just a few years ago, she would have leaped into a fistfight with any of them for daring to touch her, but here in Lafayette, personal space is at an all time low, and she's learned a thing or two about waiting for the right moment to strike.

Besides, like any spaceport flying under the ARK's radar, Lafayette is a wolfpit waiting to erupt into chaos. There'd be no sense in striking a match here, not when every glaring bouncer, arms crossed over their chests and gang tattoo peeking up above their collar, is a keg of gunpowder waiting to explode.

Raven's hand goes automatically to her own neck, where her hair, normally out of the way in a ponytail, has been let down to partially cover her shoulders. The black paint that lines her collarbone is still wet and sticky, hardly authentic enough to pass a close inspection, but if she stays clear of trouble it should look, at a distance, like the local GROUNDER gangmark.

The goddamn heat isn't exactly helping however. The recycled air smells like sweat and chemicals, and her hair sticks to her wet neck like static, only a lot grosser. Raven thinks wistfully of the ARK's wide, cool corridors, and wonders who she'd have to bribe in Lafayette to let her fix _this_ ventilation system. It's discouraging. Surely there has to be some competent mechanic in this stretch of space.

Her portable comm crackles once, twice, in her ear. Raven winces and reaches up to turn the volume knob down on the pretense of brushing her damp hair out of her eyes.

      "Found her," Wells says, his voice calm and steady as always, a drink of cool water compared to the rowdy chaos of the market around her. "Third floor, overlooking the hangar. Want me to wait for you before I approach?"  
  
      "Nah," Raven says, moving her lips as little as possible. "I'll be there in a sec."  
  
She's good at getting her way, generally. Very good. Once she's out of the market, and away from the scrutinizing eyes of the bouncers who will pounce on any potential threat, she throws back her shoulders, puts a little swing into her step, and smiles disarmingly at the blank-faced enforcer that deigns to check her id at the elevator.

      "Five creds for floor 3," he says tonelessly after the doors close. Raven's smile slips.  
  
      "What?" she asks incredulously. "There wasn't any charge here last month. This is obviously a scam."  
  
      "Five creds for floor 3," he repeats, in the exact same inclination.  
  
Raven looks around at the empty elevator, finds the camera in the corner dangling lifelessly by a few chewed up wires, and makes her decision.  
  
      "Oh for fuck's sake," she says, jabbing at the button to open the doors and throwing the enforcer out when they've only opened halfway. "I've got places to be."  
  
True to Wells' word, she finds them on the balcony overlooking the hangar, sitting side by side, legs kicked over the edge as various ships are raised through entry ports and begin unloading. They make a funny picture, flightsuits patched with duct tape, Wells with his head shaven like he still lives his life according to ARK protocol, Clarke with her usual mess of half-braided blonde hair.

This is her rag-tag family.

      "Great weather we're having, isn't it?" Raven asks as she clambers onto the edge on Clarke's other side. From their vantage point, Raven spots a real beauty of a craft over on the opposite edge - gleaming silver hull, thrusters that _must_  be the latest in technology - but she knows only the ARK has ships that nice, and they've got a silent agreement among themselves to keep low around ARK personnel.

They already lost one pilot in the last year. No sense in losing their Commander too. Raven will die before she lets them take Clarke back.  
  
      "It's shit, Raven," Clarke responds, glancing over and giving her a small, wry, smile. Despite all her cheery bravado, Raven's relieved to see that she seems all right, on today of all days. "Aren't you gonna ask how I'm doing? Wells here won't stop asking. He thinks he trained in psychoanalysis."  
  
      "He may as well have," Raven responds. "Don't pilots have to go through all sorts of mental evaluations?"  
  
      "Ugh," Wells groans from her other side. "If I ever have to look at another inkblot again in my life, it'll be too soon."  
  
      "Don't you worry," Raven says with a wry grin. "I'll protect you from the big, mean inkblots."  
  
Clarke laughs at that, a soft, breathy thing that's closer to her usual laugh than anything they've heard from her in months. She grabs both their hands and squeezes tightly, linking the three of them together. It's been the three of them for years, ever since Clarke and her found themselves in the compromising position of dating the same guy, looked at each other, shrugged, and ditched him together.

When Clarke asked Raven and Wells to escape the ARK with her, blue eyes bloodshot and mouth set in a determined line, neither of them even considered saying no.

      "All right," Raven continues after a long, comfortable pause. Clarke's hand twitches in her grip. "I'll bite. Clarke, how are you doing?"  
  
She doesn't respond immediately, absently rubbing her thumbs along the darker hands intertwined with hers and staring at the pretty ARK ship Raven was salivating over earlier.  
  
      "You know this was the first place she ever smiled at me?" Clarke says. "We were sitting right here."  
  
      "It's as romantic as anyone could get in this stretch of space," Raven acknowledges.  
  
      "Did she have a nice smile?" Wells asks. Clarke gives a start, turning to look at him.  
  
      "You never saw it?" she asks. Wells looks awkward, rubbing his free hand on the newly-shorn stubble on the top of his head.  
  
      "She liked you best, Clarke," he responds eventually. "We just never really had an opportunity to get close."  
  
      "I'm sorry," Clarke says, casting her eyes downwards.  
  
      "Don't be," Raven says. "She made you happy, and Wells and I, we wanted to see you happy. But if I'd known the bitch would back out on us when we needed her, I never would have let her on board in the first place."

      "Raven," Clarke says with a hint of warning in her voice. "I know how you feel about her, okay? But I need this day to myself. I can't handle hearing you slam her on her birthday, of all days."  
  
      "Do you want us to leave?" Wells asks quietly as Raven presses her lips together and looks away. Clarke gives a quiet negative and squeezes both their hands to keep them in place next to her.  
  
They sit in contemplative silence for a long time. The paint on Raven's collarbone itches something awful, but she doesn't dare scratch at it and smudge the fake tattoo just yet, not when she only got through about half of the list of parts she needed to buy before Wells radioed in telling her Clarke had gone missing. She needs to blend in on Lafayette or someone will decide she's perfect for organ smuggling.  
  
That is, they'll decide her organs are perfect. (They're not. The memory of her failed physical still brings a bitter taste to Raven's mouth, years after the fact.)  
  
      "I've been thinking," Clarke says, eyes fixed firmly on the shining silver of the ARK ship. Its personnel are visible from here only as figures the size of her thumb, dressed in pristine flightsuits and standing apart from the Lafayette citizens who are helping to refuel them. "That maybe it's time to go home."  
  
      "What?" Raven exclaims, leaning away from Clarke in alarm.  
  
      "Raven, let's hear her out," Wells warns, ever the practical mind. Raven bites her lip and frowns, but reclaims her position next to Clarke, elbowing her lightly in the ribs to tell her to go on.  
  
      "It's been two years," Clarke continues, her head turning side to side to gauge both their reactions. "We're no closer than we were when we started, and there's only so long we can stay under the ARK's radar."  
  
      "Clarke..." Raven starts miserably, gazing at her best friend's watering blue eyes. "You know Wells and I always have your back. But I think you're making a mistake here..."  
  
      "I give up," Clarke says, shaking her head gently and returning her gaze to the ARK ship, unable to meet her eyes any longer. "I can't keep chasing rumours on the off chance that this time it'll actually be him. Maybe L-Lexa was right about a few things. Maybe it's time for me to let go of my dad."

Raven only presses her lips tightly together and slouches, unable to think of a good way to voice the apprehension and disagreement that swirls chaotically in her head. She thinks of the spacesuit that's become like a second skin to her, of the breathtaking weightlessness that comes with routine maintenance on the _Phoenix_. It's all she ever wanted in life, and it will all end if they go back. She's never been good with emotions, or words, or putting emotion into words, or words about emotions. In the end, it's Wells who steps up where she can't.  
  
      "Can I put in my two creds?" he asks, knocking his knee against Clarke's. At her nod, he takes a deep breath and keeps going, enunciating carefully. "I think it'd be a good idea for us to take a break from the search. It's draining you, Clarke, and maybe we can do something else - we'll hit up a few colony planets, go sightseeing -" Raven and Clarke both snort at that in unison - "Whatever you feel like. But... I just want you to remember that we didn't leave the ARK just to search for Jake. This was a long time coming. And if we go back, some of those reasons are still going to be there."  
  
Raven's amusement at the thought of sightseeing fades as Wells reminds them of the awful weeks that led to the three of them fleeing the ARK together in the dead of the night. Jake Griffin's disappearance and the Council's subsequent announcement branding him a traitor had been the straw that broke the camel's back, but there had been whispers of freedom long before that. Raven recalls the three of them tangled together on the floor of Clarke's apartment, heads pressed together, fingers curled tightly, the nervousness in her gut as they whispered 'could we really do this? could we really leave everything behind and make our own lives?'

They wouldn't have been able to hijack Wells' new ship and leave so quickly had they not already breached the forbidden topic when it all became too much. Raven swallows thickly and looks away as Clarke seems to weigh her options.

Raven was always picked first before she failed her physical, before they found the possibility of a heart murmur and told her they'd never waste a spacewalk on her. Now she finds herself in the waiting room all over again, between that nervous inhale when her name was called and that hopeless exhale after the woman with the clipboard told Raven her fate.

 _Pick me_ , she thinks desperately to Clarke the words she'll never make her mouth say. _Please, pick me_. Because if it comes down to it, she's not sure she could make the decision between going back to living with her failure with her two best friends or hitching a ride with some other crew, spacewalking in a strange suit on a strange ship with strange faces giving orders.

      "Okay," Clarke says suddenly, making Raven nearly fall off the balcony with alarm. "Sightseeing it is."  
  
Raven can't help the overpowering relief that bubbles up inside of her in the form of a laugh. She squeezes Clarke's hand tightly, letting her know just how much she appreciates this.

      "I hope our crew doesn't react too negatively to the change of direction," Clarke muses. Over her shoulder, Raven catches sight of Wells' wince. He meets her eyes, tilting his head ever so slightly and raising her eyebrows. She hesitates only a moment before nodding and yanking her comm out of her ear and turning it off. Wells does the same with his, and then reaches for Clarke's. Their blonde-haired Commander is immediately on high alert.  
  
      "What's wrong?"  
  
      "It's the crew," Wells begins.  
  
      "What? Is someone injured?" Clarke asks, eyes wide as she raises her knees as though to clamber off the edge of the balcony and run to their docked ship. Wells shakes his head and nods at Raven to tell the tale.  
  
      "We're bugged," she says flatly, watching as the worry in Clarke's eyes turns to confusion and then understanding and finally, an icy anger. "I was fiddling with the water boiler - I know you said not to, sorry, but cold showers are gross, Clarke - and Shumway and Cuyler came in and started whispering about sending updates to the ARK."  
  
      "Anyone else?" Clarke asks, slipping back into her authoritative voice, the one she uses on the bridge in sticky situations, Wells sitting in the pilot's seat with a white-knuckled grip on the throttle, Raven at her side with one finger hovering over the button that connects to the mildly illegal (okay, _really_ illegal) turbo she installed in her first months on the _Phoenix_.  
  
      "Hard to say about Monroe or Dax," Wells responds. "They've both been pretty quiet since we picked them up, but that could just be personality."  
  
      "We hired them both at the same spaceport as Shumway and Cuyler," Raven argues, leaning over Clarke to make her point.  
  
      "Could have been an unlucky coincidence for them," Wells says. "Clarke?"  
  
Clarke is glaring daggers at the ARK ship now. Raven knows that as much as she entertained the idea of returning to the ARK, she wanted to do it of her own volition and not because there were ARK plants in her crew, secretly sending coordinates back to the Council. They could have mentioned it earlier, used it to convince Clarke not to give up the search. But it would have felt dishonest. Raven's happier knowing that Clarke made her decision on her own. 

      "Monroe and Dax can stay, but we'll keep an eye on both of them," Clarke says decidedly. "The others have to go. Immediately. What's the nearest stop from here, Wells?"  
  
      "That would be Mount Weather," he responds, looking thoughtful. "It's a prison planet disguised as a reformative labour camp. The ARK likes to send prisoners there if they've committed serious crimes, since it's more secure than the Skybox."  
  
      "Lovely," Clarke says, baring her teeth in a smile that holds no friendliness. "We'll dump them there, hightail it to another spaceport, and find ourselves a new crew faster than the ARK can arrange to prepare new plants. Sound good?"  
  
      "We're going to have to come up with a story to explain why we're heading there," Raven points out. "It's not exactly in our usual itinerary."  
  
      "Oh," Clarke says. "I'm sure we can come up with something entertainingly informative. If they have one last update to give to my mother, let's make it a scandalous one. Raven, Wells, how are your acting skills?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **MT WEATHER COLONY, Sector E7-G11. Allegiance: ARK.**

 

  
Half a parsec away, a grungy and half-starved convict formerly known as Octavia Blake makes a desperate break for freedom. Everything goes right, and then everything goes very, very wrong. There is a soft  _snick_ as a bullet meets its mark and her companion sags heavily against her. The last thing she sees before the lid comes down is a dark red stain, spreading.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE SKYBOX, Sector M12-J6. Allegiance: ARK.**

 

  
There's nothing wrong with a little chaos.

There is, however, something wrong with chaos that was not carefully planned and intentionally created. And this is why, as Monty hunches over an obsolete computer and mutters about deserving a raise as his fingers fly over the keyboard, Bellamy takes out his gun and shoots the radio above the door that is incessantly blaring an alarm.

Jasper startles at the gunshot that echoes through the tiny command room, jumping sideways and crashing into a set of shelves straining under the load of yellowing manila folders.

      "What?" Bellamy snaps as his best friend and right hand, Nathan Miller, gives him a _look_. "It was being loud."  
  
      "So was that gunshot," Jasper grumbles, picking himself up and nervously checking the utility belt around his hips, where several quite flashy explosives are waiting to ruin someone's day. (He assures Bellamy that they're not quite strong enough to blow a hole in the outer hull of the _Skybox_. As much as they want to create a disturbance, it wouldn't do anybody any good to have the vacuum of space rush in.)  
  
Bellamy's comm crackles in his ear.

      "Is everything all right?" Maya asks urgently, her curious accent coming in stronger when she's worried. "We heard shots."  
  
      "We're all alive," Bellamy responds shortly. "But we checked every cell and found nothing. Get Harper to bring the ship around to docks, Monty's doing some last ditch hacking and we'll need to bail as soon as he's done."  
  
      "Roger that, Commander," Harper's steely voice responds, and he can hear faint beeping in the background. He imagines his steady pilot easing the _Argonautica_ into gear and feels a flare of pride for his crew in his chest.  
  
      "Park in Dock 9, Harper," Monty says cheerfully. "I unlocked it for you."  
  
      "The Skybox is looking awfully active," Maya comments. "They're aware of our presence?"  
  
      "They are," Bellamy confirms. "If the alarms are anything to go by. If not, they will be when you fly over. Monty, what's the ETA?"  
  
      "Almost done," the young boy responds, cracking his knuckles as the computer in front of him whirs in great distress. Miller lays a hand on his shoulder, and Monty glances up quickly, flashing a bright smile at his boyfriend. Jasper, in comparison, is significantly less calm, pacing back and forth between the desk and the shelves he's scattered. "Got it!" Monty cheers.  
  
      "Let me see," Bellamy demands, striding around the desk and leaning over on Monty's other side to squint at the green text flashing across the dusty computer screen. "What the fuck is this?"  
  
      "The prison records from the last eighteen months," Monty says proudly. "I'm running her name through it now."  
  
      "Monty, you're a genius," Bellamy responds. "Tell me if she comes up."  
  
Another tense moment passes, before Monty raises his hand to motion him over.

      "Here's her file," he says quietly, keying in commands with expert ease. "I'm sorry, Bellamy. They moved her five months ago."  
  
      "To Mount Weather," Bellamy says, feeling sick to his stomach as he skims the lines in his sister's file that describe her as _'uncooperative'_ and _'aggressive'_ and _'in need of higher security'._  
  
      "Bellamy," Maya's voice sounds over the comm. "We're waiting. There's movement in the complex near you. If you don't get out now, we'll have to break you out of jail too."  
  
      "We're on our way," Bellamy responds, though the words cut him deep to the bone. "Jasper, Miller, ready to clear the path?"  
  
The lanky nineteen year old nods jerkily, one hand adjusting its grip on his gun, the other resting on his utility belt. Miller takes his place at Monty's side, guarding the only of their number who has no combat training. Bellamy inhales deeply, and throws open the door. They come across guards almost immediately. Bellamy shoots the ones aiming to kill, pistol-whips into unconsciousness the ones that plead for them to stand down first. His aim is nearly perfect after the years he spent in the Guard, and that fact is both a blessing and a curse.  
  
It's not these people that he hates, the measly amount of guards assigned to patrol the halls of a runt of a space station holding petty criminals. It's the people who put them all here - the people who put Octavia here - that he has a bone to pick with.

Miller directs them all into the hangar after checking that it's safe, and Jasper pauses to scatter a few tiny smoke grenades that roll away like marbles, getting stuck under the wheels and engines of the _Skybox's_ transport ships. They can't risk any real explosions here, not so close to giant tanks of rocket fuel, but the smoke should be enough to give them a head start.

Maya stands in the open door of the _Argonautica_ , wielding an electric baton that she sheathes when she sees they haven't been followed. She looks relieved when Jasper presses a quick kiss to her cheek, but Bellamy doesn't miss the way she hesitates and sweeps her gaze over the hangar one last time, her hand resting on the lever to close the door, like she's still hoping that if they wait long enough, their missing crew member will bound up the ramp, all flashing eyes and toothy grin, asking what their next job is.

      "Do it," Bellamy says briskly, and she nods once at him before the doors shut.

The others disperse into the ship as Harper takes off, but Bellamy just holds onto a pipe overhead and sways as he feels the floor move under his feet. There's a tiny porthole at eye level in the door, and he watches the _Skybox_ grow smaller and smaller as they race away, until it is a tiny speck in the distance and Bellamy sags to the floor, putting his head in his hands.  
  
_My sister, my responsibility._

As Commander, his job is to protect his entire crew, even if it requires his own life. And he's stepped up to the challenge more than once - nearly got himself strangled one time for Jasper's sake, blew up a GROUNDER ship that tried to collect a bounty on Monty's head, not to mention the harrowing chase that followed after they accidentally-not-so-accidentally kidnapped Maya from a life of slave labour.

How is it, then, that he's failed when it comes to protecting the most important person in his life?

It's been nearly an entire year since he's seen Octavia. The job they'd taken had seemed rotten from the start, but the _Argonautica_ had been in dire need of repairs and refueling, they'd been in a remote sector of space, and Bellamy had figured they'd get in, get out quick.

And they had, but they'd left Octavia behind, and Bellamy had never forgiven himself when he had found out she'd been arrested.

The quiet tap-tap of footsteps brings him out of his self-loathing. He raises his head to find Maya bending down to pass him a canister of water. He cracks a weak smile at her and drinks, surprised to find that he's actually quite thirsty.

      "Jasper says they transferred her to Mount Weather," Maya begins softly. Bellamy nods and stares at her shoes as she sits cross-legged in front of him.  
  
      "What's it like there?" Bellamy can't help but ask. Maya ducks her head and doesn't meet his eyes.  
  
      "Octavia's strong," she responds instead. "A lot stronger than I was."  
  
      "You weren't a prisoner there," Bellamy snaps.  
  
      "I wasn't much higher up the food chain," Maya reminds him. She twists her hands anxiously, fingers curling and uncurling. Of all his crew, Maya is the weakest physically - all frail limbs and brittle fingernails - but she knows seven languages and can sweet-talk her way out of nearly any tight situation and keeps her head under pressure far better than anyone would expect from her shy demeanor.  
  
Bellamy wonders if that's the kind of person you become after you grow up in a prison complex. He wonders if she'd relax easier if she'd had an easier childhood, if she wouldn't tense up so suddenly whenever someone's arrival in the room takes her by surprise.

      "We're going to be okay, Bellamy," she says quietly. "All of us. But you need to be brave now, and go to the bridge, and show the others you know what you're doing."  
  
He doesn't respond, but he stands and follows her to the bridge, where the others are already gathered even though there's plenty of room in the rest of the ship.

      "What's the plan, boss?" Miller asks over his shoulder, from his co-pilot's seat next to Harper. "Are we setting course for Mount Weather?"  
  
Before Bellamy can answer, Monty does, in a quiet, nervous voice.

      "No," he says, staring at the screens set up in front of him with anxious determination. He glances towards Bellamy, his profile illuminated with soft blue light. "We're being tracked. We need to land as soon as possible. I'm suggesting Polis."  
  
      "Fucking Polis," Harper mutters, shaking her head as she eases up on the throttle. The others on the bridge look similarly unsettled at the mention of their destination. "Commander?"  
  
Bellamy winces, looking away while he gathers his thoughts.

      "You sure about this, Monty?" he asks. The younger boy nods. "Then I'll trust your judgement. Harper, Miller, set course for Polis."  
  
      "Polis is going to eat us up and spit us back out," Jasper says darkly, grabbing Maya's hand.  
  
      "Shoot it in the throat on the way down," Bellamy retorts. "Wake me up if there's an emergency. I need a nap."

The commander's cabin is just off the bridge, but Bellamy is too high-strung to retreat there. He needs to stay here, just in case. He shoves Jasper's chemistry kit off to the side of the cushioned bench at the back of the bridge and curls up on it, knees bent to accommodate the length of his body. It shouldn't be comfortable, but he's exhausted by the weeks that have led to their ultimately futile invasion of the _Skybox_ , and he's lulled to sleep by the hum of the _Argonautica's_ engine and the soft murmurs of his crew.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi there! If you've read this far, well, thanks. Some things I'd like you to know:
> 
> 0\. This is a really fucking long story. I have 150k written so far, and that's just the first two arcs. (They're nicknamed 'enemies' and 'friends'. 10 points for anyone who can guess what I'm calling the third.)  
> 1\. Content warnings for each chapter will be located in the start notes, but I can promise in advance that this story will not exceed canonical levels of violence. There will be lots of swearing, some fistfights, no sexual abuse, many explosions, past substance abuse, and an almost continuous stream of illegal activity. Space pirates, man. There will also be minor character death. I intend to make you care about said deaths, but if you're worried you may care too much, talk to me on tumblr and we'll work something out.  
> 2\. If you've ever seen Firefly, this fic has a similar feel to it but its own plot and universe.  
> 3\. This was written in the hiatus between seasons 2 and 3, so that's the character development I'm going off of. I make some references to plot elements of s3.  
> 4\. Almost everyone in the character tags will get at least one viewpoint during the course of this story, however, much like the show, some will have more 'screentime' as the main characters. Clarke, Wells, Raven, Bellamy, and Octavia have the most, but your rare favourites will get their time to shine too. Harpoe is not something I expected to ship when I started writing, but here we are now.  
> 5\. Every chapter has an appropriately space-y song in the beginning notes. Check them out. Light a candle, set the mood. Just me and you and gratuitous science fiction, baby. The entire fic is also dedicated to Kidz, by Take That, whose lyrics are quoted at the start of this chapter. That song is v good for the 100.  
> 6\. Wells and Maya are alive. Abby will not be demonized. I don't approve of mindlessly hating characters. Except Finn, I really hate him. Sorry. He's not gonna show up. He'd probably be useless in space anyway.  
> 7\. The following ships will be featured: Bellamy/Clarke, Raven/Wells, Miller/Monty, Octavia/Lincoln, Harper/Monroe, and Jasper/Maya. I cannot promise that everyone will find happiness, or that the ride will not be bumpy, but I can promise that there will indeed be romantic feelings.  
> 8\. Female friendships & strong female characters in general are v. important to me. I promise to throw all the friendship at you.  
> 9\. Raven is, at the fic's premise, not disabled. I don't want to give anything away but... That's totally subject to change.  
> 10\. Canadian spelling, suck my literary dick.  
> 11\. All the science fiction is bullshitted. All of it. I study computer science and I believe that qualifies me for super nerd status but I still don't really know what I'm doing whoops. Here have some spaceships.  
> 12\. Speaking of bullshit, I am totally aware that most spaceships would be designed space-efficient to the point where air vents would NOT be large enough for people to crawl through, but for the sake of plot, let's disregard that. Multiple times. At LEAST three times. I do what I want.  
> 13\. Get ready for SO MUCH plot and SO MANY feelings.
> 
> I'm sorry this is so long. Future author notes will be shorter. Find me on tumblr as kindclaws, ask me about this story and I will shower you with affection.


	2. Unknown Lifeforms

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: tight spaces, mild descriptions of claustrophobia, mild threats of violence, medical treatment
> 
> This week's weather: [Wikus Is Still Running](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE0-fYFP5s0) by Clinton Shorter (District 9 OST)

 

 

 

 

 

> **UNKNOWN LOCATION. Allegiance: Blake.**

 

  
The only thing keeping Octavia Blake calm right now is the sweaty, trembling hand clasped tightly in between two of her own.

She can feel dried tear tracks crack on her face as she bites her lip, and wishes, not for the first time, for a hot shower and a clean bed and all the luxuries she took for granted in her few years of freedom. She should have known better after the childhood she had, growing up under the floor, but she was lulled into a false sense of security aboard the _Argonautica_.

She swears that if she ever gets to step foot on her brother's damned ship again, she'll bend down and kiss it and never stop being grateful, even if Jasper's spilled acid all over the floor again.

For a moment, she tries to lose herself in memories of pounding hearts and her shrieks of victory after another job gone perfectly, but then Lincoln moans in pain and the sound echoes off the four walls pressing down around her and she remembers exactly where she is - trapped and desperate, because Indra told her to keep running and she didn't listen.

      "Shh," Octavia says, trying to adjust the awkward bend of her legs so she can bring her face closer to where she thinks Lincoln's is. It's hard to tell in the dark. There's not quite enough room in the container for the both of them unless she straddles his hips, and normally she would have been more than happy to do so, but Lincoln is feverish and unresponsive and _in pain_ , and she's terrified for them both. "I'm here," she says, trying for a soothing tone and feeling useless.  
  
Her neck aches from the hunched over position she's had to take to fit under the lid, so she shifts down and rests it in the crook of Lincoln's shoulder, the uninjured one. She strokes his cheek with one of her hands, feeling stubble catch under her fingertips, and starts to hum the same lullabies Bellamy used to sing to lull her to sleep.

They don't work, and Lincoln continues to shiver underneath her, too warm and too weak.

Octavia stops humming, and starts making plans. She'll have to get him help somehow, even if it gets her recaptured. They'll put her in solitary, and solitary is the worst, but Lincoln will live. She'll never see him again - she doubts they'll give him back his guard job, not after what he's done to help her escape, but he'll live, somewhere else in the vastness of space, and Octavia will bite back the cruel words on her tongue and endure.

She always does.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **POLLARIS-DELTA 15 coined POLIS, Sector Q12-K2. Allegiance: GROUNDER.**

 

 

Polis was once humanity's greatest hope for recivilization.

It doesn't look like much to Miller when he and Harper land the _Argonautica_ on the dusty plateau on the outskirts of a sprawling slum of a city. _It's always nice to get planetside for a while_ , he thinks as the door drops down to the ground with a heavy thud, to step foot on solid ground every once in a while, and there aren't many places in documented space to do that, but Polis' reputation has put the entire crew on edge.

The sun is a huge, heavy thing that hangs low to the horizon. Back on the ARK, Miller's family was influential enough that he had access to all sorts of records about the old Earth. Polis' sun is nothing like the one humanity fled from so many centuries ago - it's dark and blood-red and never goes very high into the sky.

The ARK took one look at it when they tried to colonize Polis, and decided they would rather take their chances with their Frankenstein of a space station than a star that was only a few thousand years away from death. All that's left on Polis are the people that couldn't afford to leave with them, and it gives the dusty planet a cutthroat, desperate energy.

Bellamy sweeps out onto the plateau like a thundercloud, all snapping retorts and wary glares. Miller remembers the days before Octavia's arrest, when the adrenaline of their lifestyle alone had everyone on cloud nine, without the need of Jasper and Monty's concoctions. Those days, and Bellamy's peace of mind, seem far away from him now.

With Monty's help, they find the tracker clamped onto the side of the _Argonautica_. It's a tiny little thing, maybe the size of his palm, but it pulses with a red light and a soft beep, almost perfectly in tune with Miller's heartbeat. Bellamy stands at his side with his gun slung over his shoulder, scratching his head at it.

      "All right," he says to Monty after a moment. "Get yourself inside, I don't want anyone catching sight of you."  
  
      "There's hardly anyone out here," Monty protests, though he does tug his hood a little more securely around his face as he glances around at the other ships parked on the plateau nearby. None of them seem to pay any attention to the _Argonautica_. "And you guys have bounties too."  
  
      "Not as big as yours," Miller says wryly, and Bellamy seems to think there's an innuendo in there somewhere because he groans and tells him to save it for later. Monty vanishes back into the ship and Harper comes out with an impressive array of crowbars she's filched from the boiler room.  
  
Still, Miller feels a little better with Monty out of sight. At this point there isn't a single one of them on the _Argonautica's_ crew without a bounty, but the ARK's been after Monty especially for years because he's so valuable. They find all sorts of excuses to heap extra bounties on his head in the hopes some GROUNDER ship will catch up to them eventually and bring him home.

Miller thinks he's valuable for entirely different reasons. This... _thing_ he has with Monty is still new and fragile, a desire to protect that sometimes leaves Miller breathless. It's a newborn kind of love, and he'll let the ARK take it from him over his dead body.

It's pretty foolish of them to land on Polis, which is practically crawling with GROUNDER crews, but it would have been more foolish of them to keep going with that tracker clamped on, so the risk is worth it.

The tracker beeps infuriatingly at them, as though it knows its time is running out. The red flash of micro LEDs reminds Miller, oddly enough, of the locking system on the ARK, and his fingers tighten minutely around the crowbar in his hand. He steps up to the task as Harper picks out the largest and meanest-looking crowbar with a satisfied nod.

      "Ready?" Bellamy asks them as they each wedge their crowbars under the tracker's circumference.

      "Ready when you are, boss," Miller says, and they put their back into prying it off in unison. Miller feels it give and renews his efforts, though the hard metal edge of the crowbar digs into his palm and it's hard for his shoes to get a good grip on Polis' dusty bedrock.  
  
The tracker's edges come off the ship, but something in the center seems firmly attached. The display's steady red flashes start coming more frequently, and the beeping increases in both pitch and speed.

It takes Miller only a second to listen to the dread that pools in his gut and drop his crowbar to the ground. He throws an arm around Harper and Bellamy each, and drags them away from the ship, throwing them to the dusty ground and pressing their heads into the fine layer of pale sand. A second later, the explosion rattles every bone in Miller's body and leaves his ears ringing. The three of them stir slowly, sitting up.  
  
      "Fuck."  
  
Miller hears Bellamy's voice as though his ears are stuffed with cotton. He paws nervously at his earlobes, hoping his full hearing will return soon, then follows his best friend's dropped jaw and his line of sight.

Where the tracker once was, there is now only a gaping hole in the hull of their ship, about a meter in diameter. Scampering footsteps on the dust alert Miller to the majority of their crew rushing out the door to see what's happened, Jasper with his gun raised to his cheek, looking about wildly for an attacker.

      "That could have taken off our heads," Harper says, her voice still slightly muffled as the ringing in Miller's ears subsides. There's a few scrapes on her cheek from where Miller pushed her into the bedrock, and she raises a trembling hand to these now, looking shell-shocked.  
  
      "Good instincts, Miller," Bellamy says, though there's no smile in the compliment now, not when they're faced with a hole of that size in their ship.  
  
Miller only grunts a reply as he gets to his feet, unwilling to reply in case his voice sounds as weird as Harper's.

      "The hell did you guys do?" Jasper asks as Monty hovers nervously, glancing quickly between Miller and the gaping wound left in the _Argonautica's_ side.  
  
      "Tracker must have had an explosive catch in case we tried to pry it off," Bellamy says.  
  
      "I could have disabled that if I'd known," Monty says mournfully.  
  
      "You couldn't have predicted it," Bellamy responds tiredly, still sitting in the dust like he has no more strength left to stand. He's bleeding a little too, but he completely ignores the hook-shaped scratch on his face in favour of staring at his grounded ship. "Maya?"  
  
      "Present," the young girl says, peering from the darkness of the ship's door. She's been apprehensive about leaving the safety of the ship ever since they picked her up, unless there's someone at her side. Miller figures she's scared that one day Mount Weather will come back for her. He doesn't blame her.  
  
      "You're the businesswoman," Bellamy says. "What do you figure a repair like this will cost us?"  
  
Maya steps down the ramp like she expects to be kidnapped the instant her feet touch the dust, but their only company is the crews of the other ships parked nearby, who are giving them suspicious looks and wide berths, probably in case the _Argonautica_ decides to explode again.

      "A four digit amount of cred for the scrap metal alone," Maya says, shaking her head and wrapping her arms tightly around herself as she takes in the damage. "Plus someone to work it. You could likely find someone with a blowtorch to do it in the low hundreds, but if you want it to last through a solar storm, you'll want to spend at least seven hundred. Do we have those resources?"  
  
      "Not really," Bellamy says tightly, sighing and massaging his temples with one hand. "And with the ship out of commission it's not like we can do a quick smuggling job to scrounge it up. It looks like we're grounded on Polis."  
  
Jasper swears colourfully, and Miller has half a mind to do the same, but he stays silent out of respect for Bellamy's drawn and worried face. For a moment, they are all silent, staring at each other, at the hole in their ship, at the ground. Miller can't bear to look at the fear that flashes across Monty's eyes, so instead he looks towards the slums on the horizon, and their shadows stretching far across the surface of the plateau, backlit by the dying sun.

      "Miller," Bellamy says eventually, and he turns back, giving his best friend a mock salute. "Put some Kevlar under that shirt. We're going to hunt down someone with a blowtorch. Maya?"  
  
The pale girl startles slightly when Bellamy calls her name, and the next words he says are softer, gentler, mindful of her anxiety.

      "We could use a linguist to help us barter a lower price, but only if you're comfortable coming with us. Miller and I will be heavily armed and we'll never leave your side. What do you say?"  
  
Maya seems to hesitate a moment, brown eyes flickering towards Jasper. They have an entire conversation in vaguely pained-looking facial expressions, before Maya turns back to Bellamy and nods jerkily.

      "I'm coming too," Jasper blurts out. "Sir."  
  
Bellamy sighs and gets to his feet, dusting off his tattered flightsuit.

      "Deal. Everyone else, lock up in the ship and don't open it for anyone else but us. Harper, take a gun and watch that hole from the inside. Someone tries to come in through it, you shoot them in the head, no questions asked. I need you all safe. Everyone understood?"  
  
A chorus of agreements comes from the crew, and Miller reaches for Monty's hand, grabbing it and squeezing gently. _I'll be back soon_ , it says. There's an answering squeeze;  _I'll be here. Be careful._

      "Then let's get our ship up in the sky where she belongs," Bellamy says grimly, frowning towards the slums.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route from MOUNT WEATHER, Sector E7-G11. Allegiance: Griffin.**

 

  
After they take off from Mount Weather, Raven's celebratory cheering echoing in his ears, Wells puts the ship into autopilot and retreats to his cabin for some solitude. He passes by Clarke in the mess hall, who's sat Monroe and Dax down and is now explaining to them that if they ever decide to be informants for the ARK, Clarke will personally dump them on a remote planet like the others.

Wells gives her an acknowledging nod as he pours some cold coffee into his flask. He'd like to drink something stronger for what he's about to do, but it isn't wise for him to be at anything less than peak performance in case something happens and the ship needs more direction than the autopilot can give it. He's the only pilot left now, with Lexa gone forever. He leaves Monroe avidly promising she didn't know about the others reporting to the ARK, and ducks through the oval-shaped door that seals off the dormitory, their voices fading with the distance to be replaced by the hum of the engine under his feet.

His journal is a tattered, worn collection of pages held together mostly by willpower and duct tape he's stolen from Raven's room. It's a secret of his, usually hidden behind the lose air vent cover. He knows Clarke is too selfless to begrudge him this, but part of him has always felt guilty owning this much paper and not giving it to her instead. Her drawings would a better use of the journal's worn pages, he thinks, than his scratched out, choked letters.

Wells has been writing to his father since they hijacked the _Phoenix_ and sped away from the ARK without a second look back two years ago.

One day, he thinks he might actually be able to finish a letter. Until, then he takes out his charcoal pencil, hardly longer than the length of his thumb, and begins.

_Dear ~~father~~ , ~~Councillor~~ , Thelonius._

It takes him fifteen minutes to write the first line alone, struggling as he always does with what to call the man who was always there for him, until he wasn't. Then he crosses that out too. Wells begins to think that maybe he should just return to the pilot's seat and do this later, but then he looks through his open door across the corridor, where the co-pilot's cabin has been empty and locked for an entire year. He used to hear Clarke and Lexa giggling at night, sometimes, but he never told them.

 _Dear Thelonius_ , he writes again.

_Today we almost decided to come home. Clarke wanted to give up on searching for Jake, wanted to return to the ARK. That's likely the course the Phoenix would be on right now, if I hadn't spoken up._

_We're still growing up and figuring out who we are and healing, all of us. Clarke has lost both her father and Lexa in the span of two years, and now she needs to find her own direction. Raven needs to feel useful and loved, and the ARK couldn't give either to her. And I..._

_I don't know what I need, ~~father~~ ~~Councillor~~ Thelonius._

Wells sets his pencil down and reaches for his flask of coffee, making a face at the bitterness. Raven's brew, clearly. She never adds sugar. She'll usually add some to the leftovers, knowing he and Clarke prefer their coffee not to taste like late-night desperation, but sometimes she gets caught up in a project and forgets.

_It's been two years. I miss you, and I've seen so much of space, and I feel older and wiser now than I ever have. I also feel more trapped than ever, even with the freedom of all of documented space at our fingertips. And I am still angry at you, and the Council, for all your lies. You've always told me anger doesn't fix anything, but dishonesty doesn't either. Jake Griffin deserved better then what you gave him._

_We almost came home today. I'm sorry I changed Clarke's mind. I'm not ready to be your son yet._

_~~Love,~~ ~~Goodbye,~~  _

_~~Your son~~ , Wells ~~Jaha.~~_

Wells stares at the newest page in a long line of failed letters. He drinks the coffee, all of it, until all that remains is the bitter aftertaste in his mouth. Then he takes his pencil and begins to methodically scratch out every line he's just written.

He wraps up the journal again and stuffs it behind the air vent cover. On the day they inevitably return to the ARK, unable to forever stay away from their fates. Wells will give his father the journal full of words he's been unable to say, and he won't look away from the disappointment in Jaha's eyes. He knows he's failed his father's, and by extension the Council's, expectations. By god, Wells knows.

But he'll give up the journal anyway, and hope that maybe, just maybe, Thelonius Jaha will see the desperate apologies hidden between the lines of every scratched out sentence.

He sits down on his cot and sighs heavily, staring at the opposite wall. They almost went home today, and Wells is the one who stopped it.

The knock on his door reminds him that with the _Phoenix_ running with such a tiny crew for the time being, there's no time to waste on his thoughts. Raven stands in the open doorway, the arms of her flightsuit tied around her waist in the casual style she likes best, a hard expression on her face. She looks ready to take on an army, and it makes Wells' chest feel funny.

      "Something wrong?" he asks, leaping to his feet immediately.  
  
      "Systems detected two unknown lifeforms in the cargo hold," Raven responds quietly. "We've got stowaways."

Wells swallows thickly.  
  
      "We'd better get Monroe," he says. _Just in case_. "She's got the best aim of any of us."  


 

 

 

 

 

> **POLLARIS-DELTA 15 coined POLIS, Sector Q12-K2. Allegiance: GROUNDER.**

  
  
  
The engineer they picked up in a brothel whistles loudly as he takes in the damage the tracker did to the _Argonautica's_ hull.

Bellamy dislikes him already. He asks too many questions and is too damn cheerful and if he doesn't learn to keep his mouth shut by the time he's finished patching up his ship, Bellamy will threaten to put a bullet in his skull to make sure his chatter doesn't tell someone else where they're going.

      "What did you say caused this again?" the engineer asks, raising his eyebrows at Bellamy.  
  
      "I didn't," Bellamy responds tersely. "And it's none of your business. Can you fix it or not?"  
  
      "Probably," the engineer says, glancing at the sled he's tugged behind him, overflowing with various engineer-y things Bellamy can't name.  
  
      "Probably?" Miller asks dryly from his other side, stepping forward and resting his hand on the gun at his hip. "We brought you out here with the promise that you could do a little better than probably."  
  
      "It's not like you guys gave me a lot of detail to work with," the engineer responds pointedly. "Look, I'll see what I can do. But it's not an easy fix. It'll take me a day or two, and I want half the pay up front."  
  
      "You get it at the end," Bellamy says. " _If_ you manage to get her ready for space."  
  
      "Half the pay now is incentive for me to work faster," the engineer quips. Bellamy rolls his eyes up towards the sky, taps his foot three times, and then pulls out the pistol that's tucked into his waistband. The engineer throws his hands up in the air as a bullet clicks into the chamber.  
  
      "How's this for incentive?" Bellamy asks.  
  
      "I fucking hate Polis," the engineer mutters, bending down to reach for the tools on his sled.

 _You and me both_ , Bellamy thinks darkly.  
  


 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route from MOUNT WEATHER, Sector E7-G11. Allegiance: Griffin.**

 

  
The stowaways turn out to be a half-starved teenage girl with a wild look in her sunken blue eyes, and an unconscious, heavily muscled man the girl won't let them near until Clarke promises she has medical training.

      "What happened to him?" Clarke asks in her best doctor voice, one she's heard her mother use to soothe dying patients all her life.  
  
The girl doesn't answer at first, still holding onto one of the man's hands like a lifeline, hard enough that Clarke worries she's cutting off his circulation. She won't look at any of them directly, not for more than a few seconds, and her gaze flits around the cargo hold, taking in everything and revealing nothing. Clarke takes a step forward, unable to stay away from an uninjured person, and the girl shifts defensively, staring at Clarke with a vicious warning in her eyes.

      "The more you tell me, the more information I have to treat him," Clarke says, trying not to lose patience.  
  
      "He got shot," the girl says eventually, and Clarke wants to swear because not being allowed near her patient isn't going to help, but she bites her lip and thinks that it's the best they'll get for now.  
  
      "I need to take him to the med bay," Clarke says steadily, and the girl shifts threateningly at that, crouched over him like they'll forget about his trembling presence if he's out of sight. "I can't treat him there. He needs fluids and medication and a better bed than a shipping container."  
  
      "Okay," the girl says after a long, painful pause. Clarke strides forward quickly and pulls away the makeshift bandages at the man's shoulder - strips shredded from the girl's shirt, by the looks of it. She hovers over-protectively as Clarke sucks in a breath at the sight of a bullet wound. By the looks of the injury, it went straight through him and she's glad because that makes her job easier, but it's clearly been a day or two and those bandages aren't exactly hygienic. Wells and Dax each pull one of the enormous man's arms over their shoulders and heave him out of the container. The man groans while they find a way to support his weight, and the wild girl nervously shifts her weight from one foot to another, a heartbeat away from leaping to his defense. She stays within a single step as Wells and Dax make their way to the medbay.  
  
      "I'm Clarke," Clarke says, holding her hand out for the strange girl to take as they trail after the unconscious man. She doesn't take it, her gaze flitting between Clarke's outstretched palm and her companion's feet, dragging limply along the ship's floor. "Who are you, and what are you doing on my ship?"  
  
The girl doesn't answer until they have her unconscious partner hooked up to an IV drip, and Clarke's neatly stitched both the entry and the exit wounds. Raven brings her a ration package. The girl tears hungrily into it, licking up the dry crumbs that fall out of the wrapper and onto her fingers. Her eyes continue to flit around as she eats and Clarke's crew watches in a silent stand-off.

      "My name is Octavia," she says eventually. "I'm Octavia Blake, and I'm not scared of you."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo. Come find me on tumblr, I'm kindclaws and I'm embarrassingly friendly. Will be slow responding to comments tonight/tomorrow. Hope you guys had a great time watching the premiere.


	3. Song of Space

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: past substance abuse, references to child neglect, friendly gambling.
> 
> This week's weather is [Undiscovered Colors](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgoAgYR4584) by The Flashbulb from their album Arboreal.

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route from MOUNT WEATHER, Sector E7-G11. Allegiance: Griffin.**

 

 

  
The constant beeping of the heart monitor and the weight of protein in her stomach lulls Octavia into a dream-like trance. She sits at Lincoln's side, hunched over the cot he's been laid out on, her hand tightly curled in his. It's been several hours since the _Phoenix's_ crew found them in the cargo hold, and he doesn't seem to be getting any better. She left him only to take a quick shower, because the promise of lukewarm water and soap was too good to pass up after five months on Mount Weather.

The girl who said she was a doctor - _Clarke Griffin_ , Octavia reminds herself - left a while ago, saying she needed to supervise the bridge. She left Octavia a comm and told her to radio her if Lincoln's condition worsens, but so far he hasn't done much but shiver and shake under the blankets, at times radiating heat and sweating through the clean clothes Clarke gave them, at others curling in on his uninjured side as though he's cold.

Some time later, the scowling Latina who pried the lid off her container with a crowbar returns. _Raven._

      "Clarke was complaining about the bulb in her examination light flickering," she explains when Octavia raises a questioning eyebrow at her. She says nothing as the other woman drags a chair next to Lincoln's bed, stands on it, and starts fiddling with the lamp that hangs over his cot.  
  
It still seems rather strange to Octavia that the ship's Commander is also the medic, but then, the _Phoenix_ is eerily empty for a ship of its size. Though Octavia estimates it could comfortably fit fifty, it looks like the five people who found them in the cargo hold are its only occupants for the time being. By keeping quiet and listening, Octavia's heard that they're planning on picking up a new crew soon. They argued for a long time about where to land. Clarke vetoed their objections and chose Polis, a gutsy decision that made Octavia take another look at the pretty blonde and reconsider her initial impressions.

Still, she can work with Polis. Hopefully Lincoln will have woken up by then, and they can slip away while Clarke and her crew are busy hiring criminals. Octavia's seen the ex-GROUNDER tattoos under Lincoln's shirt. He may have ducked out of the bounty hunting business a long time ago, but those tattoos will buy them temporary safety on Polis, as long as they don't run into any of his old associates.

Raven's quiet swear draws her out of her meticulous planning. Octavia watches as the girl steps off her chair and picks up the screw she dropped before climbing back on and fiddling with the bulb. Under the med bay's harsh white light, Raven's olive skin looks sallow and the dark circles under her eyes are clearly visible.

      "You look stressed," Octavia comments. Her voice is a little hoarse, considering she's hardly used it the last two days, but she coughs and her throat feels better.

      "None of your business," Raven snaps, her voice slightly distorted by the pocket-sized screwdriver she has between her teeth.

      "That's where you're wrong," Octavia says simply. "Reading people's body language is exactly my business."

She thinks of the times she's slipped away when the _Argonautica_ docked for supplies at sketchy, rust-stained spaceports on the edge of documented space, leaving Bellamy bent over charts and wrinkled papers and the harsh reality of fuel costs. A pretty face and a low cut shirt was usually enough to gain her entrance into the spaceport's bars, where she'd put on a ditsy smile and swindle leering idiots out of all the cred they were carrying on them, sashaying out before they caught on to her act and leaving them staring open-mouthed at the cards on the table.

      "Yeah?" Raven asks, giving her an appraising look as she pauses her work on the bulb. "Try me."

Octavia gives her a predatory grin, delighted by the opportunity to show off. Raven's infinitely more interesting than the guards that shouted orders at Mount Weather, and Octavia's been watching the whole crew for the last few hours anyway, trying to figure out exactly how to play these people so she and Lincoln both come out alive.

      "All right," she begins. "Every time I've seen you, you've been moving around working on something. Either you keep busy to occupy your mind, thus the whole stressed thing, or you do it because you need to feel useful. You don't put any sugar in your coffee and you make a face when you drink it, but you always make more than you need and add sugar to whatever's left. You stare at Wells when you think he's not looking. Your familiarity towards Clarke and Wells shows that you've all been friends for a long time, and you'll argue with them if you think you need to up to a certain point, but if Clarke gives a direct order, you shut up immediately, like you're scared she'll boot you off the ship otherwise. You grab the left side of your chest after you lift something heavy, but not like it hurts you, just like you're surprised it doesn't. My guess is an old injury that took a long time to heal."

Octavia pauses and considers for a moment.

      "That's about everything I have," she says.

For a long time, Raven just stares at her, then she does this throaty, choked kind of laugh, and reaches her hand out for Octavia to shake. Octavia hesitates only a moment before taking it. The crew of the _Phoenix_ seem like actual decent people, so she figures she's safe for now.

      "Not bad," Raven tells her, brown eyes scrutinizing her. "That was actually uncomfortably accurate."

      "Of course it was, I know what I'm doing," Octavia says dismissively, though she can't completely hide her pleased smile. "The injury?"  
  
Raven reaches for her heart automatically before looking down and realizing she's done it, which makes a confusing spectrum of emotions play out across her face, just a little too fast for Octavia to read. Eventually her face settles on a blank, inoffensive neutral expression, and Octavia tries not to take it personally.  
  
      "Not quite," Raven says casually. "Turns out I've got a heart murmur. The ARK made a huge deal about it, but I hardly feel it most days."

      "Damn," Octavia says with feeling. She looks away at the mention of her birthplace, remembering the space under the floor and the hushed whispers Bellamy and their mother used when it came time for living inspections. "The ARK really likes to stick its nose in places, doesn't it?"

      "Yeah."  
  
Raven starts working on the bulb again, giving a pleased _hmph_ as the offending bulb comes out. She steps off her chair and drops it into one of the many drawers that line the med bay wall. Octavia catches sight of syringes and tiny bottles of medication and wishes she knew what would fix Lincoln, what would make the injured parts of him go away as easily as the flickering bulb Raven has just removed.

Octavia shakes her head. She can't dwell on this yet. She has to trust that Lincoln will be strong enough to recover on his own.

      "So what are you stressed about?" she asked Raven, to distract herself from the motionless body on the cot next to her.

      "Not so fast, short stuff," the other woman says, climbing back onto the chair with the replacement bulb. "We've barely met, you want me to spill my entire tragic backstory already?"  
  
      "Well, yeah. I guessed most of it, didn't I?"

Raven does that throaty laugh of hers again, the kind like she doesn't really find anything funny but she's laughing to prove she doesn't care. She doesn't answer as she finishes with the new bulb and tests it out by flicking the light switch several times. Octavia writes it off as a lost cause and turns her attention back to Lincoln.  
  
      "You're okay, but you're not perfect," Raven says lightly, surprising Octavia. "Now that you think you know all my secrets, do I get to hear one of yours?"  
  
Octavia has plenty of secrets, but she wracks her mind for one that won't incriminate the crew of the _Argonautica_ \- well, won't incriminate them any more than they've already incriminated themselves. When it comes to her, it seems so obvious she wonders how it didn't immediately spring to mind. Octavia _herself_ is - was - a secret.

      "I was a second child on the ARK," she says eventually. "My mother stuffed me under the floor of our apartment."  
  
Raven makes a face and an understanding nod.

      "That's rough," she says with a grimace. Then her voice goes low and bitter. "At least it sounds like she cared about you. Mine sold my rations for Red."  
  
Octavia can't help the flinch that runs through her at the mention of Red, and because the universe has only ever conspired to ruin her life, Raven notices.

And that moment might have passed on without any trouble, but just then Lincoln groans and his head lolls onto the opposite shoulder, exposing the strained side of his neck up to the bright light Raven has just replaced. And along the curve of his neck, the tiny scarred pinpricks are easily visible if you know what you're looking for.

It takes the other woman only a few seconds to catch on, and Octavia can pinpoint the exact moment all the pieces connect.  
  
      "Oh my god," Raven says, and Octavia can feel that illusion of safety shattering on the sharp edges of her voice. "He's... He's..." her voice cracks and she yells "Clarke!"  
  
      "Please don't do this," Octavia pleads, leaping to her feet and stepping in front of Lincoln protectively. "He's been clean for years, trust me. Please, he's all I have left. I've lost my mom and my brother, I can't lose him too."  
  
She reaches out for Raven, for that shared contact and understanding they felt when they shook hands earlier, for the protective instincts that exist between underdogs. But all her life Octavia's been able to count on one hand the number of people who will protect her, and that number remains constant when Raven knocks her hand away and steps backwards into the hall.  
  
      "Get the fuck away from me," Raven all but snarls. " _Clarke_!"  
  
The blonde-haired Commander runs in scarcely a moment later, with the girl with the gun – Monroe – close on her heels. Octavia can only watch as Raven shakily tells Clarke to look at Lincoln's exposed neck. She glances about the med bay wildly, but as creative as she is, there is hardly anything here that she can use as a weapon, every syringe and scalpel filed away neatly as according to ARK protocol.  
  
      "Is this true? Why didn't you tell us?" Clarke demands, taking an authoritative step towards Octavia.  
  
      "I was scared you'd dump us back on Mount Weather. I'll die before I go back there,” Octavia says, and she means the words, she really does. But she's also desperate to live, to cling to any hope there is that one day she'll step foot on the _Argonautica_ again and hug her brother and braid Harper's hair and toss back shots of the battery-acid Jasper and Monty call moonshine. "Look, I promise he's clean now. He's a good person. Everyone makes mistakes when they're younger."

      “Raven, take a walk,” Clarke commands. “That's an order. You need fresh air.”

The mechanic lingers only another moment, glaring at Octavia with darkened, red-rimmed eyes, before she turns on her heel and strides out of sight. But Clarke isn't done quite yet.  
  
      "You should have told me he's an addict when I asked if there was anything I needed to know. You lied to us, knowing exactly how dangerous Red is. If you put my crew in danger, I have no choice but to keep them safe,” Clarke says. Monroe hovers at her side, her fingers twitching on her gun, and she stares at Lincoln like he might get up and try to eat her.  
  
      "He's not an addict anymore! Please, you have to help us,” Octavia pleads. “We'll get off at the next stop you make if that's what you want, just tell me how to take care of him. He's good and he's - he's all I have left."

Clarke's jaw clenches as she gives Octavia a long, hard look, and the gesture is so reminiscent of her brother that it makes her want to cry. The only sounds in the med bay are the hum of the engine and Octavia's ragged, panicked breathing and Lincoln's soft shaking. Clarke's eyes narrow.  
  
      "How long has he been clean?"  
  
      "He says three years,” Octavia says, the words tumbling out of her mouth in relief. Clarke hasn't said yes, but she hasn't said no, either, and that means Octavia can keep pressing, keep shuffling her cards to play another round and win.  
  
      "He's making more of an effort than most," Clarke says thoughtfully.  
  
      "Clarke, you can't be serious,” Monroe whispers, stepping in close to her Commander. Clarke just turns to her and raises one perfect, blonde eyebrow. Octavia can tell she's not used to having her decisions questioned. Bell would probably hate that confidence of hers, if they ever met.  
  
      "I am serious, Monroe,” Clarke says decisively. “We land on Polis in two days. By then he should be awake. If he can prove he's clean, you can stay."  
  
      "Thank you," Octavia gushes, leaping forward and throwing her arms around Clarke. The older woman stiffens in her grip, but Octavia keeps holding on, guiltily relishing in the pleasure of embracing someone after a year with scarcely a hint of physical affection from the other prisoners. Even Indra, in her cell across the hall, was a distant, cold sort of support. Lincoln is one thing, but hugging Clarke and smelling the standard issue shampoo in her hair is like hugging Maya or Harper, and god, does she miss being loved.  
  
      "You're welcome,” Clarke says after a moment, her hands coming up slowly to return the embrace. Monroe just stands there, watching the two of them like they've announced a suicide pact. “Just... Go apologize to Raven."

      “Anything,” Octavia says. “Anything you want.”

 

 

 

 

 

> **POLLARIS-DELTA 15 coined POLIS, Sector Q12-K2. Allegiance: GROUNDER.**

 

 

  
      “Yeah, but what do girls _want_?”

Harper doesn't respond immediately, taking the time to sling her gun higher up her shoulder so she can pick up a withered canteloupe and examine it from all angles. The ARK textbooks said they should be larger, but the ones on Polis are hardly bigger than Jasper's fist, like all colony-grown food is. They can't afford to be picky this far away from the ARK and its range of wealth and influence.

      “Well, Jasper,” Harper says, and Jasper rolls his eyes quickly because he can tell by her tone that he's not about to get any solid advice, just teasing. “It may surprise you to learn that girls are just as human as guys, and thus, their interests just as varied. Also, considering Maya is _your_ girlfriend, I would think you'd know what she likes better than I do.”

      “But you're a girl,” Jasper insists as Harper sets the canteloupe down on its stand, gives the vendor an apologetic smile that is not very apologetic, and drifts away in search of hardier provisions. “And she's a girl too.”

      “Both are true,” Harper concedes. “Bellamy's map of the marketplace is shit. Where do you think we can find the water tanks?”

      “I'll show you,” Jasper says quickly, “If you help me get her a present. Come on Harper, she's been with us for nearly a whole year, it calls for a celebration.”

Harper sighs heavily, peering up at him over the edge of the scribbled map Bellamy made for them, marked with x's where they need to buy more supplies for the _Argonautica._ It also has useful phrases in Trigedasleng written in Maya's far neater cursive, since Polis' vendors use primarily their own pidgin language, and charge foreigners higher.

      “Jasper, as sweet as your devotion is, we don't have time for a party. We need to get supplies, get out of here, and get Octavia. _Then_ Bellamy will let us celebrate. I'm not trying to be a killjoy. Lord knows I need to kick back and drink some moonshine as much as the next person. But we've got priorities, you dolt.”

      “I want you to know that I totally see your point,” Jasper says, bobbing his head agreeably as he walks beside her. “But when's the next time we'll get to stop at a market as big as this one? There's so much _cool_ stuff on Polis!”

      “Might I remind you that we're not here willingly?” Harper mutters, but Jasper hardly hears her, looking over her hooded head at a vendor who has little metal sculptures displayed on a blanket that _might_ be stained with dried blood in the corner, but that could also be barbecue sauce, couldn't it? If he ignores the blanket's suspicious circumstances, the sculptures are downright romantic – origami birds and tiny prancing animals and flowers – girls _love_ flowers.

      “Harper,” he whines, grabbing her sleeve and tugging at it. “Give me twenty cred.”

      “We have to go,” Harper says instead, scrunching the map into her pocket and grabbing Jasper's wrist with more force that someone would expect looking at her slight frame. She hastily pushes him along the dusty cobble-stone street, bumping into the marketplace's other customers without apology or a background glance. “Keep your head down.”

      “But I didn't even get Maya a present!” Jasper complains.

      “There are bigger things to worry about!” Harper snaps, shoving him around a corner into a darker alley. She looks over her shoulder, her gloved hands stroking the length of her gun as if to reassure herself it's there.

      “GROUNDER scouts?” Jasper whispers, horrified realization dawning on him.

      “Worse,” Harper says grimly, looking to the alley's entrance. “There are people from the ARK here.”

      “Wait, how is that worse?” he asks, momentarily taken aback. Harper just gives him a look like she can't believe he's this stupid, and he swears she'd hit him over the head with the gun if she didn't need him conscious to make a run back to the _Argonautica._

      “Jasper,” Harper says exasperatedly. “We're all delinquents. We run a stolen ship, we smuggle stolen goods, and you're telling me the ARK is going to be dandy with that?”

      “Well,” Jasper says, nervously checking the handmade explosives on his utility belt. “I mean, GROUNDER doesn't like us much either.”

      “The difference between GROUNDER and the ARK,” Harper replies, “Is that the first is just in it for the bounty. What the ARK has against us, that's personal. Come on, we have to get back to the ship and hope that engineer fooling around with our ship knows what he's doing.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route to POLLARIS-DELTA 15 coined POLIS, Sector Q12-K2. Allegiance: Griffin.**

 

 

  
The walks Raven takes to calm down are very different from the walks most people take to calm down.

She runs a litany of explosive chemical reactions in her head as she strips to her undergarments, throwing her flightsuit into a corner, and shrugs into the spacesuit. It sits heavily on her shoulders, a weight that was foreign to her the first time she stepped out into the void, but now rests like a warm blanket over her, a loving embrace of the kind she never got as a child.

Whatever. It's not like it bothers her a lot.

 _Except_ , Raven thinks as she steps into the airlock and the first set of doors slides shut behind her, _That it does. A lot._

They say space has a song, a symphony in the cosmos where angels stroke the tails of streaking comets like the strings of a violin and every asteroid crashing into a lifeless planet is a drum beat that thrums deep in your bones and wakes you up, gasping, like you never really lived until you stepped out into space and were reborn among the stars.

They also say that if you let go of your tether when you hear the song, you'll drift away forever, your Commander's panicked pleas going unheard over the comms as you forget to come back again.

The song does that to people if they're not careful. It makes them forget everything and everyone but the melody.

Raven remembers sitting in the ARK's mess hall with the certified zero-g mechanics back when she was still desperately studying to pass her exams, seeking any advice that would give her an edge on the competition. The woman next to her had shuddered when she'd said she hated having to let go of the ARK with both hands when she was working on repairs, and everyone else at the table had nodded along, all of them grimacing.

      “It's the emptiness,” they told Raven. “The tether's the only thing keeping you attached to the station. Sure, it's adrenaline-inducing, but it's also fucking terrifying.”

      “You all sound like a bunch of sissies,” Raven had said, and they'd just laughed and shook their heads like they knew better. She'd asked about the song, then, if the rumours about the galaxy's lullaby were true.

      “I don't fucking know,” the man across from her had said. “I can't hear it over my mantra of _don't-fuck-this-up-Jim._ ”

And so Raven's question had gone unanswered, and she'd found the truth on her own years later, rejected by the ARK only to be taken under the _Phoenix's_ wing. Whether or not space really does have a song, Raven hears _something_ anyway. She takes the distant notes of cosmos yet untravelled and makes her own damn song, lets it drown out the memories of her mother with hollow eyes and hollower smiles, Red in her veins, Red on her floor.

      “You know why I named you Raven?” her mother says, and Raven lets go of the _Phoenix_. “R for Raven Reyes. R for Red.”

      “Shut the fuck up,” Raven says. She closes her eyes, and then opens them again, because she's only giving herself five minutes of oxygen out here and she needs to cherish them, because she needs to save the tank on her back for when something goes wrong and Raven needs to fix it, because Raven fixes everything.

There are so many stars. Raven sucks in compressed air, and looks at all the tilted constellations, and listens to the song no one else will listen to because they're too damned scared.

Five minutes pass. Raven forgives her mother all over again, the way she does every time she takes a spacewalk, because yes she gave birth to her just to sell her rations for smuggled Red and she made her a little incomplete with a hole in her heart that nearly fucked everything up, but if she hadn't Raven wouldn't be here right now, listening to the song of space, the song she's made herself.

Then she turns around, drinking in the sight of the Phoenix's sleek hull, tiny silver streaks showing through the brown paint they slathered on it when they fled the ARK. She knows every inch, every pipe and rivet and screw. It's beautiful, and it's home, and it's hers. The other zero-g mechanics needed tethers and two hands on the ARK so they wouldn't lose their minds out there. Raven's the best because her tether is to Clarke and Wells and the hands that gave her the tools to repair herself.

She still feels weightless when the airlock closes behind her and air hisses into the chamber. She takes the helmet off, drawing in deep, steady breaths. The comm in her ear crackles.

      “You good there, Reyes?” Wells' calm voice asks.

      “More than good,” she replies easily. Clarke always knows when she needs a walk. Clarke always knows what to do. She'll make the right decision.

The stowaway girl is waiting for her outside the airlock. Raven ignores her fluttering hands as she strips, hangs the spacesuit on the hook next to her, and starts dressing again, tying the sleeves of her flightsuit around her waist.

      “What do you want?” Raven finally snaps, because Octavia won't take the hint and go away.

      “Clarke said I should apologize,” Octavia says, jutting her chin out and staring Raven down. Raven tries not to be impressed. Most people cower when she gets angry.

      “She did, didn't she,” Raven says evenly. “Bleeding heart, that one. Wants to see the good in everyone.”

      “There's good in me to see,” Octavia argues, anger flaring up in those wild eyes of hers.

      “You're not the one I'm worried about,” Raven says, disconnecting the oxygen tank from her suit and carrying it over to the storage rack on the opposite wall. Several litres of compressed air are really heavy, and she reaches for her heart automatically after she lifts the tank into place, and then remembers that Octavia's noticed her doing it, which means she's showing too much, so she lowers her hand. "Octavia."

      “What?”

Raven takes a deep breath, leans her hand on the wall.

      "Make sure that boy of yours keeps his nose clean. Losing someone to Red ain't a pretty sight,” she says, as casually as she can manage. Raven would know. Some days she even misses her mom. Not most days, though. 

      "I will,” the girl promises, her voice a curious contradiction of earnest and serious.

      "Go on, get out of here,” Raven says, and she scurries away, back to the man wasting away in the med bay. For both their sakes, Raven hopes his story ends happier than that of her mother. She sighs, and walks to the bridge to see if Wells has any work for her, or if he'll let her sit in the co-pilot's chair and poke his cheek whenever he frowns at the dashboard. He always seems tired. He was tired back on the ARK, too, always forced to stand strong and composed in the shadow of his father's reputation, and it must have seeped into his muscle memory. Raven treasures the moments she gets him to relax. And well, if the sight of a smile on his face is enough to automatically draw one out of her, she won't question it too much, regardless of what Octavia said.

Shumway and Monroe were supposed to be on dinner rotation that night, but it would be difficult for Shumway to do his chores considering he was dumped on a prison planet several parsecs back, so Clarke steps up to take his place instead. Raven would help, but food doesn't listen to her as well as circuit boards and wires do, so she mostly watches and provides witty commentary as they bust out a bag of potatoes and mash them into a paste that looks infinitely more delicious than the dry ration bars they had for breakfast. There's even salt, so Raven knows they're showing off for Octavia.

Clarke cautions the stowaway to eat slowly, since she's been malnourished so long, and they all have to keep her company, in the name of human compassion. Sitting around a table for hours slowly shoveling potatoes into her mouth sounds boring to Raven, so she breaks into Cuyler's room and steals the deck of cards he kept in his closet, figures they may as well play a game to break the ice.

Octavia's eyes light up as Raven shuffles and doles them out in five neat piles, to everyone but herself. Then she leans back and watches as Octavia absolutely decimates everyone in between tiny bites of mashed potatoes.

      “All right, short-stuff,” Raven says after four rounds of this pathetic attempt at poker have passed. “My turn.”

      “Ready to go down?” Octavia taunts, the smile stretching her cheeks making her look more like a teenage girl than a half-starved convict.  
  
      “I never go down,” Raven responds.

A few minutes later, she _does_ go down, leaving Clarke, Wells, Monroe and Dax staring open-mouthed.

      “Not bad,” Octavia says, mimicking Raven's words from earlier. “You're the only person who ever came this close to beating me.”

      “I want a rematch, you tiny swindler,” Raven manages to choke out eventually.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our two crews will be meeting next chapter. Wonder how that's going to go down... No I'm not, I already wrote that. I know exactly what's going to happen. There's going to be so much yelling. Sidenote, how is no one worried about Dax's presence onboard the Phoenix? Should you be worried? Maybe.  
> The song of space part was inspired by a scene in Kenneth Oppel's lovely Starclimber, which is just an all around lovely book.  
> Find me on tumblr as kindclaws. I have a lot of feelings about the 100 and space and such.


	4. Hostage Situation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: hostage situation, minor violence, lots of yelling.
> 
> This week's weather is [Fire Up The Shuttle](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5d5KBfgo94) by Ryan Amon (Elysium OST)
> 
> Our two crews clash for the first time. :) Enjoy.

 

 

 

> **POLLARIS-DELTA 15 coined POLIS, Sector Q12-K2. Allegiance: GROUNDER.**

 

  
When Harper gives Bellamy news of the ARK personnel she saw patrolling the nearby slums, his jaw does the twitch that's become infamous between their crew for preceding the hell he usually rains down on whoever has made him angry. She's just glad she's not on the receiving end of the glare he sends towards the town she and Jasper just came back from.

      “Crew!” he yells suddenly, making her jump a little and getting the attention of their various crew gathered outside the ship, sitting on the rocks sharing ration packets and watching the engineer weld burst pipes together. He hasn't even started on the big piece of metal that will patch the hole in the hull, still working on repairing the damage within their ship. Harper respects him for doing a good job, even if it is under Bellamy's duress.

      “Aye aye, captain!” Jasper yells back, causing waves of embarrassed giggles to ripple through the group, aside from the serious Miller who looks, as always, like he'd punch Jasper if the others weren't around. Harper suppresses a smile and rolls her eyes. As dire as the situation is, they kinda needed a little humour.

      “This is serious, Jasper,” Bellamy chastises, his voice lower as he steps towards them. “Everyone else, Harper's brought word of patrols from the ARK. They're sticking to the slums for now, but there's an awful lot of illegal activity out here too,” he says, sweeping an arm out to gesture to the spaceships parked on the town's outskirts, crews mingling to exchange smuggled goods and information. "We should be prepared in case the Guard comes sniffing around."

      “I'm working as fast as I can,” the engineer mutters when Bellamy looks towards him, and Harper feels sorry for him, she really does.

      “I need you all to stick close to the ship until we're ready to take off,” Bellamy says, meeting the eyes of each crew member in turn. “I can't lose you too,” he adds softly, like an afterthought, and Harper looks away as she thinks of the nights she spent with her head tilted back against Octavia's knees, the other girl's hands tangled in her hair as she twisted tiny braids down Harper's back. She reaches one of her hands up automatically, fingers running through loose brown hair until they catch on a braid under her bandanna.

She's tied her own braids the past year.

      “Gotcha, Commander,” she says, swallowing down her worry, and the others follow her lead.

They've just murmured their assent to be careful when the low hum of a landing craft passes overhead. Miller whistles when the ship comes into view, and at Harper's side, Bellamy stiffens and swears lowly. Despite the hastily-applied brown paint, there's no disguising the elegant lines and powerful engine of an ARK design, the bane of any smuggler worth their weight in cred. Harper raises a hand to shield her eyes as the craft blows sand and dust into the air as it lowers, and comes to a stop on the plateau several meters away. Before the debris settles, Bellamy orders them all towards the _Argonautica's_ open door.

      “I can work faster,” the engineer says, coughing at the dust and waving his hand in front of his face before he picks up the blowtorch again. Harper tugs her hood over her hair, covering her eyes, and grimly takes position next to him, gun held tightly in front of her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route to POLLARIS-DELTA 15 coined POLIS, Sector Q12-K2. Allegiance: Griffin.**

 

  
Lincoln wakes up several hours before they make it to Polis, to the relief of everyone on board. Octavia throws her arms around his neck and nearly strangles him before Clarke pulls her off and reminds her she still has to replace the bandages and run a few checks.

Their second stowaway is exhausted and quiet, but Octavia assures her that his silence is quite normal. Clarke only nods and checks his pupil response, blood pressure, and reflexes. Everything is just a little too low for her comfort, and the dark flush of his injury where her stitches have caused the skin to swell makes her press her lips together in worry.

Still, there's little she can do with so few supplies on board - even the IV drip is more a watered down mixture of nutrients than anything substantial. Clarke resolves to wait and see how he's doing before she tries tracking down stronger antibiotics. They're in high demand out this far from the ARK.

      “Friends of yours?” the man murmurs to Octavia as Clarke moves away to pour him a proper glass of water. Clarke loudly rinses and refills the glass as Octavia answers.

      “They're not my crew. But they are friends now.”

Then Wells calls her over her comm to tell her they're approaching Polis, and Lincoln is already drifting off, evidently exhausted by even that short conversation. Clarke excuses herself politely to return to the bridge, where Wells is carefully maneuvering them into orbit and Raven is taking apart the GPS again.

      “Raven, we need that,” Clarke says sternly, but her friend only gives her a sunny, innocent smile that totally does not excuse her from anything, and tugs a few colourful and important-looking wires out of their sockets.

      “Not when we're in view of Polis, we don't,” Raven says, sing-song. “I'll have it back up and running by the time you find yourself a crew and we take off, don't you worry. I'm just adding in a third fan so the cpu will stop overheating if we try inputting coordinates while the turbo is running, relax.”

      “Polis in t minus ten,” Wells says, and Clarke counts along in her head as they settle on a plateau outside a sprawling port town. They all exhale as one as the engines power down and the dust that's rose up over their windows begins to settle.

      “You know,” Wells adds, his hands still resting on the dashboard and the throttle at his side, “It's not too late for us to take off and hire a more respectable crew off a planet that isn't crawling with bounty hunters and criminals.”

      “Nice try,” Clarke says with a laugh, before her eyes harden. “But I'm not taking the risk of the ARK planting more fakes on us. When I go home, it'll be on my own terms.”

      “Damn right,” Raven mutters from the floor, still nonchalantly decimating the GPS. Wells gives Clarke an over-the-top suffering sigh and finally unbuckles himself and stands. She tries not to smile as she trots down into the cargo hold and drops the door down.  
  
The first breath of air she takes is filled with dust, so she coughs and steps backwards. Wells gives her a grimace.

      “Don't,” Clarke says, raising a finger to shoosh him before he speaks. “I know you think Polis is a terrible idea.”

      “I didn't say anything,” Wells says demurely, as Clarke finds the discarded lid from the container Octavia and Lincoln hid in, and drags it down the ramp. “Need help with that?”

      “Got something to write with?” Clarke asks, grunting as she props it up against the ramp, where it will be easily visible by any one who walks past their ship. Wells locates a bottle of the spray paint Raven uses to note the areas she's marked for repair or replacement, and writes in his careful, elegant handwriting.

_'HIRING FULL CREW.'_

They both take a step backward to inspect their work, and then Clarke turns and surveys the other ships. There are people mulling about the shipyards; gambling, trading words, staring with poorly-disguised suspicion at the _Phoenix_. Clarke takes a moment to wish that Jaha hadn't given his son _quite_ such a nice ship as a gift. It sticks out like a sore thumb, especially in these parts.

      “Clarke, I don't think we're welcome here,” Wells says quietly, leaning close to her so his words aren't carried by the wind that picks up the dust and swirls it about their ankles. Clarke follows his gaze to one of the nearby parked ships, a dark, patchy looking thing. There's an enormous hole in one of its sides, large enough that the ship won't be going anywhere soon. Standing beside it are two people staring straight at them, a dark-haired man with crossed arms and a short woman with a bandanna clutching at her gun.

      “We'll be fine,” Clarke says primly, willing her words to be true. She sits down on the ramp, preparing to wait for potential crew members to wander past, but they turn out not to need to sit long. The two people watching her and Wells deliberate, the man gesticulating wildly, before the woman with the bandanna seems to wear his arguments down.

      “Where are Dax and Monroe when you need them?” Wells asks as they approach the Phoenix, both looking wary and suspicious. Clarke privately thinks that even if their sharpshooters were here, their odds would not be much better – both the man and the woman approaching them are heavily armed and walk with the earned confidence of hardened criminals.

      “We'll be fine,” Clarke repeats, standing to greet the newcomers. Up close, they're not much friendlier. The man eyes both of them in turn up and down, a grimace on his face, though he manages to twist it into a mockery of a smile after the woman nudges him in the ribcage. “Can we help you?”

      “Which one of you's in charge?” the man asks. Wells nods towards Clarke, and his heavy glare turns on her. Clarke tries to ignore the goosebumps that prickle on the back of her neck. “I want to know what an ARK-issue ship is doing on Polis with a shitty paint job like that.”

      “It is pretty shitty,” Wells concedes, always the diplomat. “But don't let our mechanic catch you saying that, she's fiercely protective of it.”

      “You have a mechanic?” the woman asks, eyes sparking with interest. The man's face darkens as he glances over his shoulder at the half-repaired hole in his ship.

      “I'll ask you again,” he says, turning back and fixing Clarke with bottomless brown eyes. “What's your business on Polis?”

      “Hiring,” Clarke says briskly, already growing frustrated with them. “And if you're not applying, I'm going to ask you to leave, because your attitude is going to scare off anyone who's interested.”

The man chuckles at that, and the woman looks away as though embarrassed to smirk.

      “Princess, no one on Polis is gonna touch your offer with a ten foot pole. An ARK ship like that screams trap.”

      “Don't call me Princess,” Clarke says, and at her side Wells sighs heavily. She can practically hearing him begging her not to take the bait and leap into a fight, but she's stressed and she needs a crew and this _asshole_ is just begging for her to yell at him. “And we're not with the ARK.”

      “Could've fooled me,” the olive-skinned man responds. He turns towards Wells instead. “You look an awful lot like the Chancellor's son.”

      “Estranged son,” Wells corrects, sounding like he has something big and pointy stuck in his throat. Clarke opens her mouth to remind him that his parentage is something he might want to keep to himself on a planet like Polis, but before she gets a word of her warning out, there's another voice from within the cargo hold, as well as stomping footsteps.

      “Clarke! Clarke, Lincoln wants to know if he can - “ Octavia breaks off suddenly as she appears at the top of the ramp, staring straight at the ship with a hole in its side. “- That's the Argonautica,” she breathes, joy blooming in her eyes.

      “Octavia!” the dark-haired man yells, and before Clarke can ask what the hell is going on, he bounds up the ramp and pulls her stowaway into his arms, hugging her fiercely. The woman who came with him follows quickly, positively beaming.

      “You guys are here...” Octavia says, stepping back from the man to embrace the woman as well. “Everyone? Everyone's here?”

      “We were about to come bust you out of prison,” the woman laughs, “And here you are instead!”

      “I guess her and Lincoln are going to go,” Wells says to Clarke. She nods along, surprised at the turn of events but unable to completely suppress the second-hand happiness she gets at seeing this peculiar reunion, regardless of how rude the dark-haired man might be. She hopes they have a medic of their own to watch over Lincoln.

      “You've gotten taller,” said man is whispering to Octavia, one hand stroking her hair as if to reassure himself that she's there. “And you've lost weight. First thing I'm stealing for you is a full-course meal.”

 _Did he just say stealing?_ Clarke thinks to herself as both girls laugh.

      “Wait,” Octavia says, taking a step backwards and glancing towards Clarke. “Is Lincoln okay to go? I mean, he's feeling better, right?”

      “He's not out of the woods yet,” Clarke says. "You'll have to keep an eye on those stitches."

      “Lincoln?” the dark-haired man asks, glancing between Octavia and Clarke with a deep furrow between his eyebrows.

      “Bellamy, play nice,” Octavia cautions, raising her hands to slow him down.

Clarke will remember those last words before everything went wrong, and weeks from now she'll laugh at them and how it all turned out, but at the time she is only aware of the low, constant rumble of a distant engine, growing closer. She looks away from Octavia reuniting with these people she apparently knows, to see a ship in the sky that makes her blood run cold.

And to her horror, it's coming to land on the plateau.

      “Wells,” she says, unable to tear her eyes away from it, her hand grasping at her side for her friend's last known location.

      “We need to go,” he says, running into the cargo hold. Clarke snaps out of her daze to kick down the hiring sign braced against the ramp, but before she can follow him up into the safety of her ship, a hand clamps tightly around her upper arm.

      “You're the Commander of this ship?” the dark-haired man says – Bellamy, Octavia called him.

      “Yes,” Clarke says, trying to shake off the iron grip on her arm. “Let go of me.”

      “I'm afraid I can't do that,” Bellamy says, and in one fluid motion he swings his arm around her neck and drags her closer to him. Distantly, Clarke hears Octavia protesting loudly, but she's only closely aware of trying to work enough distance between her and the man to jab an elbow into his side – and then she stills immediately, feeling cold metal at her temple. “Very good.”

      “Commander, you can't do that! She's from the ARK,” the woman with the bandanna hisses, eyes wide in alarm as she takes in the pistol pressed to the side of Clarke's head.

      “So is that ship, Harper,” Bellamy responds tersely, tightening the arm that's around Clarke's neck so that he wrenches her face up. She grits her teeth and grabs it with both hands, pulling down enough that he doesn't strangle her. “So unless you have a better idea, get the others. Now.”

      “What the hell are you doing, Bell?” Octavia asks, hands on her hips. A half-starved teenage girl should not be nearly as intimidating as she is in that moment, standing at the top of the ramp and staring down at them, but Bellamy stands fast.

      “The Argonautica's grounded,” he responds. “We don't have time to sit around on our asses waiting for that damned engineer to repair it. The ARK's cracking down on the black market here, we'll all be arrested if we stay. The way I see it, princess here is our ticket out.”

      “I don't care about your ship,” Clarke gasps out. “Let go of me this instant, or I'll set the entire ARK fleet on you.”

      “Got the entire fleet wrapped around your finger? And you said you weren't a princess,” Bellamy responds, so close to her ear that his breath washes over her, warm and furious. Clarke begins to wish she'd listened to Wells and never landed on Polis, when she hears steps in the cargo hold.

      “Commander Griffin?” Monroe's pale and drawn face appears from within, peering down at the commotion. Dax is a step behind, glaring at the scene before them. Behind her, Bellamy swears lowly.

      “ _Clarke Griffin_?” he asks. “Daughter of a Councilwoman and the ARK's most respected pilot? Fuck, I was joking when I called you a princess.”

      “The one and only,” Clarke responds through her teeth. “Now do you want to rethink holding a gun to my head?”

Monroe has her gun trained on them as well, but they're so outnumbered that even if she managed to shoot Bellamy instead of Clarke, it wouldn't do them any good. Clarke gives her a tiny shake of her head, and the sharpshooter lowers her gun warily. Dax reluctantly follows a moment later, always one to prefer shooting first and asking questions later.

      "No can do," Bellamy says with a grunt. "We're running out of time."

In the distance, the ARK ship has landed in a cloud of swirling dust, and Clarke knows it's only a matter of time before they come out, see the ship, and realize it's the _Phoenix_ that disappeared two years ago and very recently ditched its moles. But Bellamy seems set on standing just inside the cargo hold with the gun pressed to her head hard enough to bruise, waiting for a small crowd of people hurrying towards them.

      “Is that everyone?” Bellamy asks a broad-shouldered, serious looking black man who brings up the rear. He gives a brisk nod and Bellamy drags Clarke deeper into the hold, shouting orders for the others to close the door. To Clarke, he asks. “Where's the bridge?”

Clarke has no choice but to cooperate, considering the pistol he hasn't dropped from her head for one second, muttering one-word directions as the rag-tag crew from the other ship tags behind. _We went from taking on two stowaways to being full on hijacked_ , Clarke thinks, and hopes that when this is all over, Wells doesn't hold it over her head too much.

Of course he won't, because he's Wells and he's the kindest and most diplomatic person she knows, but that doesn't mean his face is absolutely priceless when they emerge onto the bridge, Bellamy tightening the arm around Clarke's neck so she's gasping for air.  
  
      “Get us off the ground or I'll shoot her,” Bellamy threatens, nodding towards the pilots seat. Wells just shakes his head, standing grimly alongside a furious-looking Raven.

      “We can't,” he says simply.

      “The GPS?” Clarke asks, remembering that Raven had just started dismantling it when she left. It lies half-intact on the floor at her feet, forgotten in favour of dealing with the immediate crisis.

      “I have eyes, Clarke,” Wells answers with a hint of frustration in his voice. “I know how to take off from a planet without one. The problem is we've been jammed by the ARK ship.”

Looking out the windshield, Clarke can see that he must be right – there are a dozen other ships parked on the plateau, crews scurrying frantically about, but none of them have been able to start their engines and take off, and Clarke doubts that they haven't been trying.

 _This is it_ , she thinks with a sinking feeling in her stomach that's heavier than any atmospheric pull. _They'll take us back now, and all that distance we ran won't matter._

But then an Asian boy with expressive dark eyes dashes out of the ranks of Bellamy's crew, heading towards the controls.

      “Back the fuck up,” Raven snarls, leaping in front of him and pushing him back with one arm. “You're not touching my ship.”

      “Let him past or I shoot Clarke,” Bellamy yells above the arguing that erupts in the bridge's strained atmosphere. The tension between the two crews is so thick that Clarke could cut it with a knife, and it's not just the arm around her neck that's making it hard for her to breathe. “He can get past the jamming signal.”

      “Raven, do it,” Clarke pleads, her voice ragged, and her friend's brown eyes stare balefully into hers from across the bridge as she steps aside and the boy throws himself into keying commands into the control system. Then the comms ping with an incoming call.

      “Attention,” a cool female voice says over the inter-ship communications. “Hailing unmarked vessel. Identify yourselves and open your doors for a search of your ship, effective immediately.”

The bridge falls utterly silent as Wells reaches forward and turns the microphone on.

      “We aren't carrying any contraband,” he says, speaking clearly and authoritatively, sounding so much like his father then that for a moment Clarke's stomach twists. The comm crackles with static for a moment, and then the female voice returns.

      “Then you have nothing to fear from the ARK,” she says simply. “We request that you also identify yourselves, effective immediately.”

      “Don't,” Clarke warns Wells quickly.

      “Monty, how's the jam coming along?” Bellamy asks the Asian boy.

      “Done!” Monty responds, spinning around in the chair and throwing his arms up. “We're free to go, now _go go go_!”

Clarke can only watch, trapped by Bellamy's arm and the gun held to her head, as the woman wearing the bandanna throws herself into the other pilot's seat, the one that has remained empty since Lexa left without a backwards look, and she tastes bile in her mouth at the sight of someone else in her place, but says nothing because the ARK is here, and they want to take her ship and only freedom away from her, and Clarke cannot allow that.

 _Victory stands on the back of sacrifice_ , Lexa once told her. Lexa told her a lot of things.

The _Phoenix_ rises into the air, amid shouted commands over the comm system and bullets that ping as they ricochet off the hull. Clarke holds her breath, swaying slightly against the hard plane's of Bellamy's chest, warm at her back, but they leave Polis behind them for a sky that bleeds from blue to purple to black, and then they are free, in the loosest sense of the word.

      “Bell,” Octavia demands with hard eyes, appearing in front of them once Wells and Harper have brought the _Phoenix_ into a stable transit. “Let her go now.”

For a moment, Bellamy is silent at her back, and Clarke fumes, racking her brain for ways to escape him and the presence of his crew on her ship.

      “You're outnumbered, princess,” he says to her finally. “So make sure you don't get any funny ideas.”  
  
Then he lets go, and Clarke begins planning bloody murder, because she's never been very good at doing what other people tell her to do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **ARK STATION, Sector K04-H19. Allegiance: ???**

 

 

Abby Griffin slumps backwards against a wall, hidden in the infirmary's storage closet and peels bloodstained latex gloves off her hands.

She should have scrubbed out after surgery, of course, she knows better than to run off, but it's been a long day. _Too long._ She balls the gloves up in one hand and tilts her head back, hoping it'll ease the strain in her neck. It doesn't, it never does, but somehow she always hopes losing a patient will get easier.

Abby checks her watch and decides she has another seven minutes of silent respite before she has to venture back into the infirmary, wave off Jackson's concern, and scrub out so she can attend the Council meeting. She feels exhaustion in the bend of her back and the weight of her shoulders, but she can't afford to show it. Not with Councilwoman Sydney pushing for heavy reform on an ARK already nearly at its breaking point.

Six minutes now. Abby sighs and rubs at her temples. Sometimes she wishes they could afford to spare painkillers for simple migraines - but even the ARK abides by the rations it has set for the good of humanity.

Distantly, alarms begin to ring, and she suppresses a groan as the blare grows louder as the signal travels down the ARK's halls. Just what she needed. She wracks her mind for the week's scheduled drills, and can't recall anything that was supposed to happen today. As a Councilwoman she should know, but she thinks they'll just have to forgive her for that today.

Over the alarms, the comms in her ear crackle to life. Abby winces and reaches up to adjust the signal until a deep, familiar voice comes into focus.  
  
      "Abby, where are you?"  
  
She checks her watch. There were four minutes of rest left, but she supposes those will be cut short now.  
  
      "I haven't forgotten about the meeting, Thelonious," she responds petulantly. "I'll be there on time."  
  
      "There won't be a meeting," the ARK's Chancellor says grimly. " _Where are you?_ "  
  
      "The infirmary," Abby says, frowning though he can't see her. "Did they cancel it? We never cancel."  
  
      "Get out of there, now," Thelonious interrupts. "Abby, listen to me. Get to Arrow's hangar, that's the closest one to you. Callie's ship is ready to launch, you _need_ to get on that ship. _The ARK is revolting_."  
  
Above the din of the alarms, Abby realizes she can suddenly hear shouting, and the pounding of many feet down metal corridors. The sounds are muffled by the infirmary's containment walls, but not enough to make her disbelieve Thelonious' warning in her ear.

      "Diana?" Abby asks quickly, adrenaline sweeping through her to her fingertips.  
  
      "Who else?"  
  
      "Where are you?" Abby asks as she unlocks the storage room door and creeps back into the infirmary proper. Jackson is gone, no doubt to seek out the cause of the alarms. She hopes he won't be hurt. He's a good assistant, and naive enough that he shouldn't seem like a threat to anyone. "Have you got an escape plan of your own?"  
  
      "Yes," Thelonious replies tersely. "I'm more worried about you. Are you on the move?"  
  
      "I am now," she says, waiting for the footsteps on the other side of the door to fade. A moment later they pass and she steps out, looking both ways before dashing left down the empty hallway. "You need to explain this all to me. Why now? Have they found Jake and Marcus?"  
  
      "Get to Callie," her old friend says. "I'll explain everything when we rendezvous."  
  
      "You'd better," Abby warns lowly. She comes to a fork in the corridor and presses herself against the wall to peek around the corner. Empty, so she turns it and keeps going, pushing herself to ignore the questions burning in her mind and the sound of her still-bloody scrubs rubbing against each other. Her comms crackle again as another member joins the channel.  
  
      "Abby?" Callie asks. "Abby where are you?"  
  
      "On my way," Abby says through gasps of air.  
  
      "There are guards in Arrow hangar," Callie informs them both. "They're not ours. Diana must have this planned longer than we thought."  
  
      "Will I be able to get through?" Abby asks. For a moment the only reply she receives is the wail of sirens overhead. Callie's silence is telling. "Callie, go before they lock you down. I'll figure something out."  
  
      "Not without you."  
  
Abby turns another corner and is greeted by a long line of guards in riot gear, every single one holding a stun gun up to their sights. She skids to a stop and raises her hands in the air.  
  
      "You don't have a choice," she tells Callie. "Please, _go_."  
  
The last thing she hears before the guards yell at her to remove her earpiece is Thelonious and Callie both calling her name in unison. She lets her earpiece fall to the floor, without looking away from the barrel of the nearest gun. The line of guards parts, and from the middle, Diana Sydney steps forward with a simpering smile. There's a holoscreen in her hands, one that Abby's eyes are immediately drawn to as Diana turns it around to face her.

The _Phoenix_ docked on a dusty planet somewhere, painted grungy brown but unmistakably familiar.  _Clarke!_

      "You know what this is, don't you, Abby?" Diana asks. "This is a live feed, in case you were wondering. Your daughter will be in our custody very soon. I hope you don't mind too much if we escort you to your quarters to await her arrival."  
  
      "You don't know what you're doing, Diana," Abby warns.  
  
      "I'm keeping the peace," Diana says, eyes hard like flint. "Unlike you. Your family does have such a terrible tendency to disrupt the order of things, doesn't it? Cuff her and take her to Alpha."  
  
Abby suppresses the urge to fight back as the guards that were under her command a few short hours ago step forward and roughly pull her arms behind her back, snapping cold metal bands around her wrists. In front of Diana's predatory poise, she's painfully aware of her own bloody scrubs and the hair falling out of her ponytail. She knows better than most the value of an image.  
  
      "Abby," Diana calls out, just as a guard grabs her by the elbow and hauls her in the direction of her quarters. "If it makes a difference, I'm sorry it had to happen this way."

      "It doesn't," Abby answers, forcing her chin high. "But I'm counting on my daughter to give you hell."

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clarke is very good at giving people hell. Too bad Diana doesn't know she's already escaped. Look at you, Bellamy, you just accidentally thwarted the evil politician.  
> Find me on tumblr as [kindclaws](www.kindclaws.tumblr.com).


	5. Forces of Nature

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: A lil bit of swearing, maybe? It's a light chapter.   
> This week's weather: [Command School](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRdsdY9mgPU) by Steve Jablonsky (Ender's Game OST)
> 
> Heads up, Minty fluff headed your way.

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route to UNKNOWN DESTINATIONS. Allegiance: Divided Blake/Griffin.**

 

 

Maya doesn't mean to lose herself in thought – she's just exploring the enormous new ship, wondering at the empty mess hall and the dormitories large enough to hold a crew of thirty, running her hand along sleek metal walls and comparing them to the memories she has of the _Argonautica_.

They are good memories, safe and happy ones, and she hopes they'll return to that ship and repair it soon, but in the meantime she can't deny she's a little bit fascinated by this new ship.

As she comes out of the dormitories, she sees a painting inset into one of the wall panels, and approaches it curiously, her trained eye sweeping over the colours and forms, recognizing it quickly. She reaches a hand out, hovers just above the surface of the painting, and pulls it back to her chest, scolding herself.

“It's not the original.”

Maya hadn't heard anyone come up behind her, so the voice takes her by surprise. She whirls around to see the pilot from the other crew. He's been calm and polite in the last few hours since they boarded, but Maya still thinks of the circumstances with which they met and feels terrible. In the past year she's learned not to dwell too long on the consequences of her crew's actions, but there's always that whisper in the back of her mind, if she lets it take over.   
  
"Clarke painted it," the pilot continues with a gentle smile, like he knows what she's thinking and wants to put her at ease. "She was always the most artistic one of us. The Phoenix didn't feel very lived in, when we moved in, so we hung a few of her paintings around. There's a beautiful landscape outside the medbay, if you want to look."

“I might,” she forces herself to say. Silence stretches too long. Maya casts desperately for something to bridge the gap and comes up with, "You have a really nice ship."

“I'll pass on the compliment to Raven. She's the one who keeps it this nice,” the pilot says, cracking another kind smile. He holds his hand out for her to shake, and Maya wipes her palm on her shirt before taking it vigorously. “My name's Wells. I'm the pilot.”

“Maya,” she answers. “I'm the linguist.”

“Does everyone on your crew have a fancy title?”

Maya blushes and looks at her feet, hidden within sensible boots whose leather is beginning to crack and peel just past her toes. They were a gift from Jasper, the very first thing she could ever call her own.

“We all have a job to do, yes,” Maya says quickly. “Like cogs in a well oiled machine.”

“And I suppose your Commander is the taking-strange-ships-hostage cog?” Wells asks dryly. Maya's gaze slides sideways, to the opposite wall, and she begins to greatly dislike the direction this conversation is taking.

“Bellamy is a good person,” she argues defensively. “He does what he has to, to keep us all safe.”

“I know. I don't agree with his methods, but I can't deny that he cares for his crew. That's why I have a proposition," Wells says simply. Maya licks her lips nervously - they're always cracked and bleeding, no matter what she does, though it probably doesn't help that she gnaws on them when she's waiting for a job to finish - and motions for him to continue.

"Look, it doesn't take rocket science to connect the pieces," Wells continues. "You guys need a ship, we have a ship and need a crew. We got off on the wrong foot, but we can make this work."  
  
Maya winces, thinking of the screaming argument that had erupted as soon as Bellamy had taken his gun away from the other Commander's head.   
  
"Are you sure about that?" she asks. She's quite certain the tension between the two crews is more than just a product of her nerves. No, she can't imagine Bellamy and Commander Griffin ever getting along.  
  
"It can't hurt to try," Wells says. "I'll talk to Clarke. Can you talk to Bellamy?"  
  
Maya shrugs one shoulder, considering her chances very carefully. The eldest Blake can be difficult and unpredictable, she knows his shortcomings despite all his virtues. He doesn't like to change his first impressions of people once he's made them, and Maya is trying to be realistic about the odds of him warming to the _Phoenix's_ original crew. She'd have a better shot talking to his sister, she realizes.

"No," she says, and Wells' face falls before she hastily adds. "But I can talk to Octavia, and she can talk to him."  
  
"Okay," Wells says, his face breaking into another one of those kind smiles that makes Maya want to flee, because there must be some ulterior motive behind the white teeth. But then he walks her back to the medbay to see the landscape he'd mentioned (technicolour, acrylic on rough canvas) and Maya begins to think that perhaps the _Phoenix's_ original crew is trustworthy, if a little prickly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route to UNKNOWN DEST** **INATIONS. Allegiance: Divided Blake/Griffin.**

 

 

  
Raven Reyes has a little problem.

It's 6 foot 1 inch, has followed her into the Commander's cabin she converted into her own private workshop because it was one of the bigger rooms, and calls himself her ex.

And she's not exactly happy about it, not at all, because Kyle Wick thinks he knows her. He knows the Raven Reyes from before the  _Phoenix_ , the Raven Reyes that studied her ass off only to fail anyway, the one with the drugged up mother she found lying on the apartment floor, the little girl Raven no longer is or wants to be.  
  
"Go away, Wick," she says, sitting down at her desk and trying to ignore him as he prowls around the edges of her workshop, poking at all the half-finished prototypes that litter the shelves. It proves unsuccessful, so she slams the screwdriver in her hand down and stares at him until he turns around and faces her.   
  
"It's been a while, wrench monkey."  
  
"And it can be a while longer," she agrees briskly, pointing her screwdriver towards the door. "Out."  
  
"I dreamed about our reunion, you know," Wick tells her, and for a moment she thinks he's serious and she opens her mouth to tell him that's creepy as fuck, but then she catches his mockingly dreamy expression, hands clasped under his chin and eyelashes fluttering at her, and she has to remind herself that she doesn't find that funny. "There were fireworks. And cake. And you were happier to see me."  
  
"I was never happy to see you on the-" Raven breaks off suddenly, inhaling sharply.   
  
"On the ARK," Wick finishes for her, his voice small and quiet.   
  
"Fuck that place, man," Raven says, picking up the dented fan on her desk and a pair of plyers with which to straighten out the bent flap. Despite herself, she wonders just how her old engineering acquaintance - because that's all Wick is, an _acquaintance_ \- end up on Polis of all places. "So Polis, huh? How'd they get stuck with you?"  
  
"Aw, wrench monkey cares about me after all," Wick jabs, reaching for the fan she's got in her hands with itchy fingers. She slaps his wrist away and holds it closer to her chest, her glare wordlessly telling him to get his own project.   
  
"Polis has it rough enough without having to deal with your shitty designs," she says instead.   
  
" _My_ shitty designs?"  
  
"What do you want, Wick?" Raven asks shortly. He sobers up immediately.   
  
"It's been a while," he says, watching her evenly.  
  
"Two years."  
  
"How are you doing?" Wick asks. He never did beat around the bush. Raven hesitates before answering, trying to make sure the reply that leaps to her tongue is honest. And strangely, she finds that it is.

"Better," she admits grudgingly. "I'm good nowadays."

Then, because she's said too much, she stands up and stomps out of the workshop.  
  
To her intense dissatisfaction, Wick follows behind at her heels, commenting on all the spaces around the ship where she's dismantled a wall panel to fiddle with the wires behind it and forgotten to replace it. She's not used to having someone question her, not since Clarke and Wells usually bow to her authority on these things, and it makes her very much want to lock Wick in one of the dormitory rooms until he learns to control his mouth.   
  
On the bridge, she finds the two pilots from the other ship hanging onto Wells' every word as he gives them a rundown of the controls. Raven tries not to resent him for being so damned diplomatic, always. Clarke's made herself scarce, no doubt having trouble seeing someone else in the seat that used to be Lexa's, and Raven adds that to her list of reasons to hate Bellamy Blake, under the fact that he's brought Wick down on her head.

Said dark-haired asshole is lounging by the bridge's desk, feet kicked up on the bench, pawing through their travel log. The overly aggressive way he ruffles the printouts alone tells Raven that he's still in a foul mood, has been since his sister gave him hell for holding a gun to Clarke's head and then locked herself in the med bay. She suspects Octavia's protective streak comes less from any friendship they might have been building - it's only been a few days, after all - and more from the fact that Clarke's the only one on board with any expertise to take care of Lincoln.

None of this matters much to Raven. She makes a point to dump the partially-repaired GPS onto the desk and encroach into his elbow space. No one upsets Clarke so much that she has to retreat to her room like she did after Lexa's betrayal. No one - not on Raven's watch.

"Do you mind?" he snarls as Raven sits down and starts clearing a space near the cpu for the new fan.   
  
"That you marched onto the ship, took my best friend hostage, and made us fly off without a crew?" Raven answers automatically. "Yes, I _do_ mind."

"Don't take it too personally," Wick chirps from behind her. "He held a gun to my head too, I think that's just his way of being friendly."  
  
"Technically, Raven, we do have a crew now," Wells says from the controls. "They picked us more than we picked them, but..."  
  
"No," Raven says. "I know you like being goody-goody-two-shoes and getting along with everyone, but I am _not_ letting you do this to Clarke-"  
  
"Hey Wells," the serious-looking pilot calls, leaning over the holo display Raven tried to make 3D a few months ago and nearly irreversibly damaged. (It's still a work in progress, okay. She knows it's possible, she just can't get the projector angles right.) "There's a funny symbol on your radar."  
  
"Oh," Wells says as he looks over the other man's shoulder. "Oh shit. Someone get Clarke, now."  
  
Bellamy stands smoothly, the travel log forgotten on the desk.

"Griffin looked like she needed to ride out a tantrum last I saw her," he says. "Fill me in instead."  
  
"Oh, fuck you," Raven snaps, standing and pushing past him to see the radar display, which is now beeping and pulsing red. Her anger melts away, giving place to cold fear that pools in her gut. "Nope, nope, I'm getting Clarke."

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route to UNKNOWN DESTINATIONS. Allegiance: Divided Blake/Griffin.**

 

 

 

The _Phoenix_ handles like a dream.

Miller and Harper are used to working off of each other, their skills honed by one too many dogfights in restricted airspace with Bellamy yelling over their shoulders _faster go faster we need to lose them_. Miller loves the _Argonautica_ , he really does, but then he gets to toy with the sub-engine throttle and he swears he can feel the _Phoenix_ purr under his feet. It's almost a religious experience.

"Oh my god," Harper says reverently, stroking the dashboard, and privately, Miller agrees. Standing between them, one hand braced on each of their seats, Wells grins. Miller likes the man, finds him more approachable than he remembers from their childhood days on the ARK, is a little sorry they just hijacked his ship but a little less sorry that he gets to pilot it for this brief, wonderful moment.   
  
There's apparently even a turbo hooked up, and when Wells is asked about it, he goes several shades paler and says _'we don't use that unless we really need to. Raven got a little too excited when we gave her free rein over the mods.'_

But then Miller notices the little red blips on the radar display and the party's over. The blonde Commander Miller used to see all the time in the medical station a few years back shows up again, and he braces himself for Bellamy's hackles to rise again, but the two stand side by side, surprisingly unhostile as Wells gives them a run down of the situation.

"It wouldn't have been all that hard to take a few screenshots from the security feeds and run them through the blueprints database," the Chancellor's son says, his eyes fixed firmly on Clarke. "Once they got a match on the Phoenix and our sister ship, and they had a location on the sister..."  
  
"They figured out it's us," Clarke finishes, her shoulders sagging with exhaustion. "The shitty paint job was only going to last us so long. Fuck."  
  
"Life in the privileged lane got too tough on you?" Bellamy taunts, arms crossed over his chest. "Had to take a vacation, and now you're upset mommy and daddy want you back?"  
  
"You stay out of this," Clarke utters, turning on her heel to jab a vicious finger into Bellamy's chest. Miller leaps out of the pilot's seat and lays a cautioning hand on his friend's shoulder, seeing the telltale twitch in his jaw.   
  
"Bellamy," he says lowly. "Alpha Station wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and you know it. Can we focus on the ships tailing us, please?"  
  
"Fine," Bellamy says tersely, shrugging off his hand and glancing back towards Clarke. "How fast does your Phoenix go?"  
  
"Fast," Wells supplies helpfully. "Faster with Raven's turbo enabled, but that only lasts a parsec and a half and we lose most of our control, so it's no good in anything less than a straight line."  
  
"Harper, location?"  
  
"Q9-L3," Harper rattles off quickly, pulling up their map. "We're pretty remote. The nearest ports are four and thirteen parsecs away."  
  
"Ports won't do us any good," Clarke argues. "Even if your hacker can keep pulling off the jamming trick when they get close, we're too easily registered and they'll run us dry of fuel and supplies eventually."  
  
"Then what do you suggest, princess?" Bellamy snaps.   
  
"We lose them in the Potomac Belt."  
  
Miller swears you could hear a pin drop in the silence that falls over the bridge when Clarke says those dreaded two words. Well, maybe you wouldn't be able to hear it over the hum of the engine, but the point stands. The Potomac Belt is a churning river - as close to one as you can get in the void of space - of asteroids and rocky debris. Most pilots would rather take a ten parsec detour than go anywhere near its edges.   
  
Miller swallows nervously and glances sideways at Harper, who looks equally queasy and excited. They're not most pilots.

One day he'll have to speak to Bellamy about the way he's got them all addicted to adrenaline pounding through their veins, but until then he'll keep the dangerous situations coming.

"We'll get smashed to pieces," Bellamy says finally.   
  
"You should have more faith in your pilots," Clarke retorts. "Surely there must have been some confidence involved in the decision to _hijack my ship?_ "

"Wells should be one of the pilots," Raven pipes up from the back. Seeing all eyes turn on her, she shrugs as though the explanation is obvious. "Doesn't matter how good your pilots are, Wells knows the Phoenix's limits better. I'd rather not die today."

Harper holds out her fist without hesitation, and Miller reaches out his own, staring into her brown eyes. They crinkle slightly, but give away none of her intentions. With the practiced ease of two friends long since used to bartering chores, they play three quick rounds of rock-paper-scissors.

Miller wins.   
  
"Damn," Harper says, getting out of her chair and pushing Wells in. "This would have been a good story to tell."  
  
"Still will be," Miller responds, turning around to the dashboard. "Stay close."  
  
"Miller, you good for this?" Bellamy asks, his voice low and urgent.   
  
"Yeah," he answers, a touch more confident than he really feels. "Of course."  
  
"If we all die, princess," he hears Bellamy say behind him. "This is on you."  
  
" _When_ we lose our tail, I'll accept your gratitude in the form of you _getting the fuck off my ship_ ," Clarke parries back. Miller draws a hissing breath in between his teeth and thinks to himself that if the Potomac asteroids don't kill them first, their Commanders might pick up the slack.   
  
"Better use Raven's turbo now before we get too close to the Belt," Wells says, his calm voice easily carrying over those of the arguing Commanders and silencing them. "It'll give us enough of a head start on the ARK ships that we can afford to slow down between the asteroids."  
  
"How deep are we going in?" Miller asks, glancing to the other pilot's chair.   
  
"Just enough. They won't follow us in," Clarke says, at the same time as Bellamy says "All the way through."  
  
Miller stills the fingers he's anxiously drumming on the edge of the dashboard. He's inclined to listen to Bellamy, like he has all these years, but if Wells is inclined to listen to his own Commander, that could cause problems they can't afford somewhere as dangerous as the Potomac Belt. Copilots need to be in tune with each other's intentions. They need to work as one. There's a reason he and Harper get along so well, even though she provides at least 80% of the conversation between them.

"Decide faster," Wells says. "We need to start the turbo."  
  
"All the way through," Bellamy insists. "You don't just make a bold decision like the Belt and not follow through on it."  
  
"There's a difference between being bold and being stupid!"  
  
Miller glances sideways at Wells, who merely holds his eyes and nods, slowly.

"Clarke," Wells pleads. "What's stopping them from hanging on the edge and waiting for us to return?"  
  
"Fuel."  
  
"They've probably resupplied more recently than we have," Miller says, glancing over the Phoenix's stats.  
  
"We'll go all the way through," Clarke says like it pains her. "But we do it _smart_."  
  
"Oh it's a good thing you cleared that up, because I was planning on do it _stupid_ ," Bellamy retorts, and then Miller tunes them out.  
  
With Harper's hand resting nervously on his shoulder, it finally strikes Miller exactly how absurdly dangerous their plan is. They're about to dive into a stream of planet-sized chunks of ice and rock with more than enough momentum to pummel their ship to pieces, and they're still sitting around arguing about _how deep?_

He looks around for Monty, seeking the younger boy's reassuring smile and that spark he gets in his eyes when they're gonna do something risky in the name of freedom (or science), but then he remembers Monty's somewhere else in the ship with Jasper and Maya and the recently reappeared Octavia, and the _Phoenix_ is much larger than the _Argonautica_ ever was. He probably won't hear if Miller shouts for him.

Then Wells is already reaching for the turbo lever, and Clarke's grim voice echoes in all of their comms, telling them to buckle up. Miller has just enough time to follow her advice and strap himself into his seat, hoping Monty's done so as well wherever in the ship he is, when he feels the _Phoenix_ come alive under him.

Earlier, he thought handling the _Phoenix_ was like a dream.

He was right, in a way, because as soon as the turbo kicks in, it shakes them all awake. Miller is distantly aware of Harper praying next to his ear, the same prayers he's heard from her only a couple times before, when she got shot in the hip on a job and nearly bled out on the floor of their cargo hold while Bellamy raced them to the nearest spaceport.

Distant stars flash past them, there and then gone in the next blink, warped into perspectives that shouldn't be possible given the magnitudes of the universe. After what feels simultaneously like a minute and an eternity, the ship begins to slow, the turbo sputtering and dying as it runs out of power but valiantly struggles to hold on.

"Q6-L23," Miller reads from the displays, his stomach threatening to empty at the thought of how much distance they've just covered. They've given themselves several hours ahead of the ARK ships, but they'll lose that time quickly in the Potomac's currents. "The Belt is under three parsecs away."  
  
Bellamy swears lowly from back of the bridge. Miller doesn't blame him. He'll need to give that Raven chick a high five later, once he stops feeling about to vomit.  
  
"Permission to use the ship's communications for personal reasons, Commander?" Miller asks, intentionally leaving it ambiguous which Commander he's asking. He'll follow Bellamy to the ends of the universe, no questions asked but... It's still Clarke's ship that he's appropriating, and Miller's father raised him to be a gentleman about these kinds of things. Or, he tried to, at least. Probably never expected his kid to turn out a thief.  
  
"Is now the time?" Clarke asks in a strained voice.   
  
"Go right ahead," Bellamy says, apparently having made it his mission to listen to what Clarke suggests, and then insist on the exact opposite. Miller shrugs at Wells' questioning look and raises his hand to his ear, turning his comm on.   
  
"Hey Monty," he says into the microphone, and if his voice is a little breathless, can he really be blamed?   
  
"Hi Nathan," the static-distorted but unfailingly warm voice responds. "Am I high, or were we just going really fast? The whole ship was vibrating down here."  
  
"We were going pretty fast," Miller admits. "In case we get smashed by asteroids and I don't get the chance to tell you later... I love you."  
  
The strangled yelp of surprise that answers him over the comm is kind of a big deal, because this thing between him and Monty, it's new, and precious, and Miller's mostly danced around the serious aspects of it for the last few weeks as he's tried to come to terms with exactly how he feels about his crewmate.

It's the first time he's ever voiced those feelings out loud. Maybe he shouldn't have done it publicly over the comms, but in his defense, they might get smashed by asteroids soon. Desperate times call for a last minute confession or two.

"I love you too," Monty responds, a little shyly but without a shred of doubt. "But sorry, what was that about the asteroids?"  
  
"That was disgustingly adorable," Raven announces dryly from the back of the bridge. "But I think we have an ARK ship to hide from."  
  
"Right on," Miller responds, feeling giddy and weightless and indestructible like he hasn't felt in years. "I'll get back to you later, Monty. Ready when you are, Wells."  
  
"One Potomac Belt coming right up," the other pilot says, and everyone on board the _Phoenix_ collectively holds their breath as the stream of asteroids looms up ahead, hulking silhouettes of ice and rock blocking their way forward and the pinpricks of stars behind them. Miller takes deep breaths in and out, remembering the intuitive way the _Phoenix_ responded to his control earlier.   
  
_This is the same as the ARK's practice simulations_ , he lies to himself. Because it's not. It's three years later, it's all real, and this time if he plows the ship straight into an asteroid, he won't wake up and clamber out of the testing pod into his father's waiting arms.

This time, they'll all die if he makes a mistake, and the first time he'll have told Monty he loves him will have been the last.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I dunno if any of you guessed, but the engineer that was working on the Argonautica was, in fact, Wick. I know the fandom's rather divided on him lately, so, a little talk about Kyle Wick:
> 
> I really liked his character when I started writing this fic last spring. I loved his banter with Kane and I think he brought out some beautiful qualities in Raven and goddamn is he useful for engineering plot purposes. Unfortunately, his actor ruined most of that for me. As much as I still love Wick's character, I can't entirely separate him from the actor. 
> 
> Wick was too deeply involved in Aphelion's plot for me to completely edit him out, so what I've done is minimize his role and rewrite Wicken as a past romance rather than a developing one. (Same with Clexa.) Also, Tierney dragged me into the Wellven dumpster, so, there's that. I hope all of you, regardless of your views on Wick, can accept this. 
> 
> However we can probably all agree that Minty is sooooo great.


	6. The Calm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: allusions to anxiety attacks, mild descriptions of injury + medical attention, the dreaded cliffhanger.
> 
> This week's weather is: [Atlantis](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ggs65dbmcU) by Steven Price (Gravity OST)

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, travelling through POTOMAC BELT, approx Sector R6-L23. Allegiance: Divided Blake/Griffin.**

 

 

  
Octavia's missed her brother. She really, really has.

So it almost hurts to see the vulnerable shadow in his eyes as she tells him off for hijacking the _Phoenix - seriously Bell? I thought we agreed to lay off that!_ \- and storms back to the med bay. But he always gets like this whenever she's put into a shred of danger - always gets overbearing and impulsive and terrified the way only she can see it, and she can't deal with it anymore.

It's been nearly a year since she saw him last, and she's grown up. She's learned how to take care of herself. She fucking broke herself out of one of Mount Weather's labour camps with the help of a single morally-conflicted guard. She doesn't need him to hijack an entire spaceship for her anymore. Octavia tells herself she'll go back and see him in a few hours, once they've both calmed down, but right now she needs something - _someone_ \- else.

Lincoln is a bizarre contradiction in a world spent almost entirely in flight.

He grounds her like no other person, takes her in when her mind is a storm and all she wants to do is rage at everyone around her, and he doesn't try to tame her, just sharpens her anger into a fierceness she can use for better. He was probably what kept her sane those months on Mount Weather, where her frequent escape attempts and fistfights with the other prisoners landed her in solitary confinement and his was the only face she saw for weeks at a time, bringing her food and water. He rarely spoke, but sometimes his lips would quirk up in a faint smile when she told him stories about the crew whose absence ached so painfully in her chest, and she knew he was listening.

(Someday years from now he'll admit that most of those food rations were his, in fact, because he couldn't bear to see the one person with the most fight in her in the camp be broken down. But she's getting ahead of herself here - there is more story to be told before she reaches that point.)

Of that faithful steadiness of his, of the unwavering strength she has grown so used to in such a short time, only a small part remains when she returns to the med bay. It scares Octavia to see Lincoln like this, so weak and shivering. His eyes are closed as she comes to his side, but they open as she rests a hand on his forehead to feel his temperature.

      "We're moving," he says, and it's a statement, not a question.  
  
      "Yes," Octavia says. "Remember my dumbass brother and his merry band of thieves? They hijacked the ship and now we're finding somewhere else to lay low."  
  
Lincoln manages a weak smirk at that, and Octavia mirrors him unconsciously. The moments where he shows his emotions this freely are rare and precious, and she finds herself doing this often, frowning when he frowns, relaxing when he relaxes.

      "This is not how I wanted to meet him," Lincoln admits, shame colouring his low voice. Octavia wraps her hand tightly in his and shakes her head resolutely.  
  
      "If he doesn't accept you after you took a bullet for me while breaking me out of Mount fucking Weather, then he's even more of an idiot than I thought, and I'll get some sense into his skull one way or another," she says, putting as much conviction into her words as she can.  
  
      "I didn't break you out," Lincoln responds, and his eyes flutter shut, telling her this simple conversation has already cost him the small amount of energy he has left. "You broke yourself out. You just dragged me along."  
  
Octavia grins at that, despite everything, and settles into the chair next to the cot, still holding his hand. Before she knows it, she has fallen asleep on his chest.

It is Clarke's voice that wakes her, some undefined number of hours later. Octavia glances about the medbay wildly before realizing the blonde Commander is speaking through the comm in her ear. She reaches a hand up to touch it, glancing to make sure Lincoln is still asleep.

      "Yeah?"  
  
      "We're heading through an asteroid belt soon," Clarke says. "There are straps under Lincoln's cot, reach a hand underneath and pull them out."  
  
Octavia follows her orders and ends up with a handful of seatbelt straps.

      "How tightly do I need to strap him in?" she asks.  
  
      "Not too tightly. He needs room to breathe. Just enough that he won't fall off the cot if there's turbulence. You'd better hurry, we're going turbo very soon."  
  
      "You guys have a turbo?" Octavia asks excitedly as she buckles the straps over Lincoln's thighs, abdomen and shoulders. " _Awesome_."  
  
      "It's homemade, illegal and mildly temperamental," Clarke responds, sounding significantly less enthusiastic. "You really should not be happy about it."  
  
The resounding click over the comm tells Octavia that the conversation is over, so she finds the seat next to Lincoln and buckles the seatbelt over herself, settling in for a long ride.

      "Man," Octavia whispers, her eyes tracing the lines of Lincoln's sleeping face, lingering on the faint pained creases in his forehead. "I hope you get better soon so you can be awake the next time we go _turbo_. A turbo! Can you imagine? The Argonautica never had a turbo."  
  
As it turns out, experiencing the turbo in the heart of the spaceship is not all that thrilling. The medbay is nestled underneath and slightly behind the bridge, making it one of the safest places on the ship. Octavia can feel greater vibrations in the floor under her feet, and all of Clarke's equipment is rattling in its drawers as a high-pitched hum shakes the ship, but without any windows there's no way to tell just how fast they're going.

Eventually the turbo fades away, leaving only a ringing in her ears and a restlessness in the rest of her body. Octavia daydreams. She loses herself in thought, her fingers hovering slightly over the rows of scars on Lincoln's neck, though not touching because she hasn't yet done that while he's awake and doesn't know if he'd want her to. Her hand dips lower, fingertips scrapping along the edge of the stark white bandages that peek out from under his shirt.

She's just about to tug the hem down and get a better look at the bandages when his hand catches her, and her gaze flickers higher to see him watching her intently.

      "Help me up," he says hoarsely, letting her hand go to scramble at the buckles holding him down to the cot.  
  
      "Lincoln, no!" Octavia says, trying in vain to reassure him. There's a fevered, panicked look in his eyes as he dodges her hands and gets the first strap loose, sitting up despite her efforts to keep him down. "You have to stay put, you're injured and there might be turbulence!"  
  
But he doesn't listen to her, leaning away and coughing over the opposite edge of the bed, shoulders shaking violently with the hacking cough that sounds deep and wet in his chest. When he turns back to her, Octavia draws in a sharp breath at the sight of a tiny spot of blood on his shirt, over the bandages. As she watches, it grows, slow but steady.  
  
      "Clarke!" Octavia yells into her comm. "Clarke, something's wrong with Lincoln!"

 

 

 

 

>  
> 
> **SPACEPORT THIRTY-SIX coined TON DC, Sector S20-M6. Allegiance: NONE.**

 

  
Bellamy has no idea who _Lincoln_ is, but he can hear the terror in Octavia's voice as she begs Clarke for help over the public comms, and it tells him all he needs to know. He'll have a talk with her about the perils of strange men later, right now, he needs to do everything in his power to take away that fear in her tone.

He curses the seatbelts that bind him down as Clarke and Wells shoot lightning fast questions at each other, hammering out a safe trajectory to the nearest spaceport. Just over an hour later, they're finally clear of the Potomac Belt and all the dangers it presents to their ship, and Bellamy throws aside the seatbelt with disdain, coming to the front of the bridge to rest his hands on the back of Miller's seat and stare intently out the windshield.

      "Another three hours to TonDC," Clarke says. "I hope Lincoln can last that long."  
  
      "I'm holding you responsible if he doesn't," Bellamy responds curtly. "What about that turbo of yours? Can we use it again?"  
  
      "Not if you don't want it to overheat and blow us all up," Raven responds, glaring at him from over the GPS she's finally gotten around to reinstalling. Bellamy suspects she's taking her sweet time with it so she can sit in the bridge and glare daggers at him. "It needs time to cool down. I've been meaning to divert the hydraulics through the engine bay to dissipate some of the heat, but we haven't had enough cred for mods of that depth."  
  
Raven's mechanic-speak is gibberish to him, so he tunes her out and paces the bridge like an animal in a cage until Clarke threatens to inject him with a sedative. Bellamy sits after that, not because he thinks she'd really inject him - sedatives are hard to come by in this part of the galaxy, she wouldn't waste any on him - but because he realizes the importance of playing along with the _Phoenix's_ crew.  
  
Just for now. Just for Octavia. Then once the heat on Polis has cooled down he'll take them all back to the _Argonautica_ and never look back.

Then their comms ping, and Bellamy leaves his plans behind.

      "Hailing unmarked vessel, class five. What is your identity and intention?"  
  
Bellamy grabs the microphone before Clarke can spring up from her place next to Raven, and he ignores the glare she sends him as he hefts it out of her reach. TonDC looms up in the windshield looking for all in the world like a child's attempt at the ARK, made with scrap metal and space debris.

      "Hailing TonDC, this is merchant ship Phoenix," Bellamy responds breezily. "We're looking to dock for supplies and refueling."  
  
      "Merchant ship?" Clarke asks dryly as soon as his thumb is off the microphone.  
  
      "Spaceports eat it right up," Bellamy replies. "They love thinking you're contributing to the economy."  
  
      "Phoenix, you are cleared for docking in port 27. Welcome to TonDC," the air controller responds, and this time the crackle over the comms signifies the end of the conversation.

While Harper and Wells carefully nudge the _Phoenix_ into the port that opens up for them on the spaceport's underside, Raven pulls out a tub of black paint. Bellamy doesn't want to admit he's impressed as she starts slathering Clarke's collarbone and neck with a makeshift GROUNDER marking. He didn't think a few privileged runaways from the ARK would have picked up on a trick like that yet.

 _You're a runaway from the ARK_ , a little voice whispers in the back of his mind. _That's different_ , Bellamy responds, and it is. Because people like Clarke, like Wells - even Miller, to a certain degree - they all had a choice in how they lived their lives on the ARK. Alpha Station was kinder to them then it was to people at the bottom of the social hierarchy. People like him and Octavia. Monty and Jasper. Harper.   
  
      "I'm taking Monroe off-ship," Clarke says, turning to him and handing him the paint tube once Raven's finished with her. "You can take one person from your crew."  
  
Bellamy wrinkles his nose and squeezes a dollop of paint onto the tip of his finger as he considers his options.

      "That's very generous of you." Bellamy says, keeping a level voice though her arrogance makes his blood boil.  
  
      "I could also just lock you in the boiler room and do this myself," Clarke retorts sweetly, and Bellamy just shakes his head in disgust and looks away.  
  
      "Monroe's your muscle?" he asks instead. His first instinct is to pick Miller, trusting as always in his old friend to have his back. But if Monroe is already the intimidating factor the team needs, then maybe he should take Maya for her negotiating skills, except that if he asks her he needs to ask Jasper as well...  
  
      "Jasper says Maya's not feeling well," Miller says, suddenly coming to his side. Bellamy knows all too well what he really means, having spent more than one sleepless night in the kitchen with her after Octavia's disappearance, going over smuggling plans and finding comfort in the other's anxiousness. He'll stop to ask her how she feels later, right now his priority is the stranger Octavia clings to like a lifeline.  
  
      "Fine," Bellamy responds, turning back to Clarke. "Miller's coming."  
  
She gives him a curt nod in response, and then they're all marching towards the cargo hold, waiting for pressurized air to hiss into the lock before it opens up and raises them into the hangar.

TonDC is small as far as spaceports go, and this side of the Potomac Belt there's hardly any ARK interference. Most of the drawn and suspicious faces that Bellamy passes as Clarke marches them out the hangar are GROUNDER-affiliated, a fact that makes him tug the collar of his jacket a little higher up his neck as they venture into the spaceport's twisting corridors and compartments.

The painted tattoo is a great idea as long as no one looks too close, but if anyone catches on that it's fake, all it says about them is that they have something to hide. In this stretch of space, secrets sell high.

They find the clinic tending to a long line of coughing children, a sight that twists Bellamy's gut and makes him look away. Clarke on the other hand sets her face harder and scrutinizes every one of the workers taking care of the sick patients, occasionally glancing down to a scrap of paper she has in her hand. Bellamy has no idea what she's comparing until she singles out one of the doctors with a nod of her head.

      "Can I help you?" the man says. His voice is low and Bellamy suspects it could be a kind one, used for stories and lullabies at night were it not for the background noise of ragged breathing from his patients and the tired circles under his eyes. There's something else under his eyes as well, a swirling tattoo, partially faded with age. As Clarke crumples the paper in her hand, he sees the same design roughly sketched in ink.  
  
      "Yes," Clarke says. "We need antibiotics. We have the cred."  
  
      "I don't dabble in smuggling. None of us do," the man says. He shakes his head and tries to walk around them, going for the non-confrontational path though he's easily as tall and broad as Bellamy.  
  
      "I have patients to tend to," he grounds out with a sharp glance at Clarke when Miller throws out his arm to stop him.  
  
      "We have one too," Bellamy responds.  
  
      "Then bring them here," the doctor retorts. "I don't give out antibiotics without knowing exactly who and what they're for."  
  
      "An infected gunshot wound," Clarke says. "He's not strong enough to come here and we're not strong enough to carry him that far. I'm medically qualified, will you please trust me when I say I know what I need?"  
  
The man clearly doesn't look happy as he sweeps a steely gaze over the crowded clinic and all the patients left to treat, but after a few words with one of the other doctors he tells him his final offer - take him to the patient so he can discern for himself whether to hand over the antibiotics.

Bellamy's just glad they don't have to make a bigger scene.  
  
They march him back to the _Phoenix_ with Miller on one side and Monroe on the other. Clarke leads the way and Bellamy takes the rear, watching over the group and glancing over his shoulder at anyone whose gaze lingers on them too long.

Thankfully, they make it back to the ship with hardly any trouble. Well, Raven's arguing loudly with that engineer that somehow slipped on board with the rest of them as they fuel up the ship, but Bellamy couldn't care less about them and leaves them to it. Raven apparently gives up on the discussion, because as soon as she spots Clarke she ditches the forlorn man and follows them into the med bay.

Bellamy isn't prepared to see Octavia looking so distraught, tightly clutching Lincoln's hand as he wheezes weakly on the cot. He strides forward and pulls her away so the doctor has room, wrapping his arms around her as she buries her head in his chest. She smells like antiseptic and the cheap regulation soap in the ship's bathrooms and the scent makes his nose tickle like he's about to sneeze.

The doctor recoils as soon as he gets close enough to see Lincoln's face.

      "You did not mention you wanted to treat an exile," he says, whirling on Clarke with such anger that Bellamy tenses and drops his arms from around Octavia. On her either side, Miller and Monroe heft their weapons, flooding the med bay with tension.

      "So what if he's an exile?" Octavia asks loudly.  
  
      "He was dismissed from our crew for a reason," the doctor says.

      "He's still a person in need of medical care!" Clarke argues.  
  
Bellamy is surprised that anyone hears the hoarse whisper from the cot with all the yelling, but somehow they do, and all eyes turn on Lincoln as he struggles to sit up, one hand reaching out, palm bared to the harsh light above.

      "Nyko," Lincoln pleads quietly. "I don't want to die hearing such cruel words from you."  
  
      "And I didn't want my best friend to start shooting himself with Red," the man - Nyko - responds, glowering back at her though he makes no move forward now that there are guns trained on him. His eyes lower, his voice grows rougher and pained. "But you still did."  
  
      "What kind of a person doesn't help his own friend?" Octavia says, standing beside the cot and quivering like she might throw herself forward at the slightest provocation. Her face is twisted with disgust.

      "You brought home a _Red_ addict?" Bellamy accuses almost simultaneously, turning on Octavia. _Why didn't anyone tell him?_

      "Don't you dare, Bellamy," she says, jabbing a finger into his chest. "Firstly, he says he's been clean for years-"  
  
      "Oh, he _says_?" he responds, raising his eyebrows to show her exactly what he thinks of her friend's promises. Octavia overrides his argument, yelling louder.  
  
      "He saved my life! Where were you when I was stuck on Mount Weather?"  
  
      "Looking for you!"  
  
      " _Everyone shut the fuck up!_ "  
  
Bellamy falls silent in surprise as Raven strides forward, taking a stand beside Octavia once she's commanded everyone's attention.

      "He deserves a second chance. I found my mother dead and destroyed. He doesn't have to be. So _you_ -" Raven says, fixing Nyko with a piercing glare, "-need to give my friend Clarke what she needs to do to save his life."  
  
      "Please, just give us the antibiotics, we'll pay as much cred as we need to," Clarke pleads in the tense silence that follows Raven's outburst. Bellamy has to admire her persistence, if only because it seems like the only thing that is keeping Octavia from committing murder on board the ship. He doesn't know where they're going to get that cred that Clarke keeps promising, because he sure as hell doesn't have any extra in his back pocket, but he figures someone privileged like her has thousands to her name.  
  
The thought of owing the crew of the _Phoenix_ anything makes his blood boil, as well as the thought of his baby sister hanging around with a Red addict, so he turns his back on the group and faces the wall, fuming quietly. They'll be working for weeks to pay off that debt - and with the  _Argonautica_ temporarily grounded, the jobs they have in progress will be delayed. It'll take time to mollify disgruntled clients and build back their reputation. Time Bellamy hoped he'd be able to spend with Octavia. Nothing has been going as he planned.

      "Fine," he hears Nyko say eventually, and then there are murmurs of instruction and cloth rustling as he apparently hands over the medicine Clarke's asking for.  
  
      "Bell," Octavia says quietly. He shakes her hand off when it brushes cautiously against his elbow. "Bell," she says again, louder and with a hint of anger. "I'm sorry about what I said, okay. But I know what I'm doing. I don't need you to approve everyone I want to get to know."  
  
      "We'll talk about this later," is all he can choke out, and then he's following Clarke and the others out of the med bay so they can pay Nyko. Bellamy can feel Octavia's gaze burning into his back as he strides down the hall, his footsteps pounding in time with the anger that pulses through his bloodstream.  
  
The clear berth they get on their way back to Nyko's clinic is at least due in part to the glowers he gives everyone who dares to look at their party a second too long. Bellamy sees Miller giving him looks out of the corner of his eyes, but he ignores his friend for now, buried in thoughts of Octavia shaking him off, telling him she doesn't need him.

 _You didn't ask if I needed you_ , he thinks, in a voice too sad and lonely to match his furious exterior. _You didn't ask what I did to try and get you back._

      "Blake."

He's pulled out of his thoughts to find Clarke walking close to him, way closer than is really necessary. In the next breath, he realizes she's whispering, and understands the near proximity.

      "We don't have the cred he's asking," she says, so softly that the others walking up ahead with Nyko can't hear.  
  
      "What do you mean?" he asks, his mind struggling to wrap around her words.  
  
      "I mean, I was bluffing, and now I don't know what to do," Clarke responds. There's a deep crease between her eyebrows, the only outside sign of her conflict.  
  
      "Are you fucking kidding me?" Bellamy says, rolling his eyes up to the ceiling. They already gave Lincoln the first round of antibiotics, it's not like they can take that back now. As soon as Nyko realizes they don't have the cred with which to pay, he'll call spaceport security - which, in these parts of space, is less of a spaceport security, and more of a local GROUNDER crew that makes the rules and floats anyone who disagrees.  
  
They'll only need to run their faces through the records and find out that every single member of Bellamy's crew has a bounty more than high enough to pay off the antibiotics.

      "You're the criminal, figure something out!" Clarke says, her hands fluttering nervously at her sides.  
  
      "You're the daughter of a Councilwoman, do you honestly expect me to believe that you don't have riches beyond imagination?"  
  
      "They cut me off!"  
  
Bellamy is _surrounded by idiots_. Already, Nyko is looking over his shoulder at them, wondering why they're falling behind and whispering furtively to each other. Bellamy's jaw clenches, and he thinks of Octavia, of the last words he said to her. He can't let them be arrested and separated again with that bad blood lying between him.

He can't.

And that's the very moment the sirens go off.

Bellamy's first thought is, embarrassingly, _oh look, a distraction_. And he's so wrapped up in delight at the chaos that suddenly surrounds them, thinking how easy it'll be to go with the crowd and lose Nyko, that it takes him another heartbeat, and the emergency lights that turn on above and flash bright red, to remember what those sirens are for.

      "Oh god, no," he says, but his words are lost in the screams and shouts of TonDC citizens as they pass him. He's pushed and shoved by the frantic streams of people that knock into his shoulders, but Bellamy finds a way through them and grabs Clarke's wrist, pulling her along with him.  
  
      "Which way to the ship?" Miller pants, materializing at his side. Bellamy has a brief moment to be grateful that he took him instead of Maya, because they're going to need the guns that he and Monroe hold onto tightly.  
  
It's difficult going the opposite way against the people that rush past them, but soon enough the corridors clear and it is just the four of them, feet pounding against the metal under the soles of their ratty boots, breaths rattling in the brief moments of suffocating silence between siren blares. The red emergency lights cast an eerie glow over everything, making Bellamy flinch at every metallic scrape that echoes throughout the spaceport.  
  
He realizes exactly what those scrapes are when they run straight into a dead-end corridor, a door descending from the ceiling to block the spaceport off, section by section.

It's a survival technique, one that ensures that even when the spaceport is breached, at least some of them, hidden behind strong metal doors, will live. However, like any survival technique, it comes with a price, and the price in this case is the people who are unlucky enough to be trapped in breached sections.

_They are the price._

Just before the door touches the floor, giant curved claws dart underneath. Bellamy winces as the claws score the surface of the metal before finding purchase.

The door stops descending, and as the four runaways stare with bated breath, it slowly starts inching up, up, up.

      "Go," Bellamy says. Miller and Monroe turn tail in an instant, running back up the corridor they just came from. He turns to follow, only to see that Clarke remains frozen in place, staring in horror at the claws carving out a passage to them. Cursing, he steps backwards and grabs her hand, wrenching her after him.  
  
      "Ever seen reapers, princess?" he says, panting, as they dash after the others. He doesn't wait for Clarke to answer. "Because trust me, you don't want to."

 _We're already dead_ , he thinks but doesn't say, because he refuses to let his last moments be ones of fear. Instead, he thinks of Octavia, hopes she's safe inside the ship, hopes the _Phoenix_ is preparing to take off right now. His only regrets are his last words to her. He hopes she remembers the kinder times between them. The piggy back rides when she was small enough to carry on his back. The stories told late at night as they curled together in his bunk, voices low so no one passing in the hall would hear. The dolls they would make together with scraps of their mother's fabric, each of them named after legendary heroes. 

Then the sirens fall silent, and the ringing in Bellamy's ears sounds suspiciously like the calm before the storm.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, you know what they say about dire situations bringing people together. :)


	7. Nightmare Onboard

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: reapers, blood, this is where that graphic depictions of violence tag starts to come in - it's about canon-typical but do take care, Jasper and Raven having unsafe science experiments (please don't do this at home, no, seriously, please don't do this at home, my ap chem teacher was a huge pyromaniac and set things on fire in class at least once a week and she's made me very aware of how flammable things are.) There's also a brief description of tight spaces in Clarke's POV, so take care if you're claustrophobic. 
> 
> Today's weather is: [The Winter Soldier](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTuS_Qf5_jk) by Henry Jackman (The Winter Soldier OST). Play it while you're reading, seriously, this is one my fav songs on the playlist.

 

 

 

 

> **SPACEPORT THIRTY-SIX coined TON DC, Sector S20-M6. Allegiance: NONE.**

 

 

  
Like most spaceport radio systems, TonDC's docking comms usually operate on a one-to-one channel, unless there's an emergency and the traffic controllers want to broadcast to all the ships in the hangar. This makes listening in on other broadcasts tricky, unless your name is Monty Green and you can hack into the spaceport comms in your sleep.

Monty doesn't consider this work, more of a puzzle. Drifting through space for years can get boring after a while, even if the _Phoenix_ is a lot larger than the _Argonautica_ was. They've all found ways to occupy their minds - Monty's is getting past flimsy security measures. He respects TonDC for at least _attempting_  to shield their comms, but as he turns up the volume in his ear he reflects that it's not the greatest challenge he's ever had. Hell, even stealing the _Argonautica_ from the ARK's hangars wasn't that hard, and that was before he had several years of heists under his belt.

There's nothing exciting happening over the comms at first - just traffic control welcoming various ships into the hangar after they're cleared.

He listens intently to the differing timbres of all sorts of Commanders, most older and more experienced than Bellamy or Clarke. He doesn't mind following a man hardly a few years older than him. It makes things exciting, at the very least. Monty and Jasper never could sit still and follow the rules, not back on the ARK, not now.

Monty tries to imagine sitting in the bridge of a different ship, under a different Commander. He laughs. He likely wouldn't be listening in on forbidden channels, ears perked for any mention of the ARK ship that was tailing them earlier.

      "Something funny?" Maya asks, sitting down next to him and tucking her feet under her legs. Monty gives her a broad grin and shakes his head.  
  
      "I hacked into the port comms because I was bored," he explains. "It's nice to see you doing better."  
  
Maya averts her eyes, but the smile on her face is only moderately embarrassed as she pushes her bangs out of her face, so Monty figures he hasn't said anything too wrong.

      "Just got a bit nervous about the ARK ship following us, that's all," she says. The smile fades. "I never want to go back."  
  
      "You're not going to," Monty promises, scooting closer and leaning his head on her shoulder. He's glad they're friends now. When she first joined their crew, Monty struggled with no longer being the focus of Jasper's attention, the same way Jasper needed to adjust when he started spending more time with Miller. But they've found their balance now, and Monty has every intention of keeping it. Maya's good for Jasper, good for him, good for all of them. "We're too good at what we do to get caught."  
  
Maya giggles at that and reaches one hand out to rap her knuckles against the armrest beside her.

      "Don't jinx it," she warns.  
  
      "Me? Jinx something?" Monty responds breezily. "I'm a lucky charm. Probably part leprechaun."  
  
      "I've always pictured leprechauns with red hair, honestly," Maya teases.  
  
      "Then I'll spend my next paycheck on dye. Bellamy will approve it if I tell him it's for historical accuracy."  
  
This time, Maya laughs so hard that Monty almost misses the raised voices echoing in his comm. He frowns and raises one finger to pause the conversation, the other hand going to his ear and turning up the volume.

      "I repeat, hailing unmarked vessel. What is your identity and intention? If you do not respond you are not cleared for docking."  
  
      "What's wrong?" Maya asks quietly, her pale face turning troubled. "Monty?"  
  
      "Some ship's refusing to identify," Monty mutters, standing up and walking forward. Maya follows behind, hovering at his shoulder as he taps commands into the _Phoenix's_ dashboard. The comm feed playing into his ear transfers to the bridge's speakers so Maya can hear as well, and security cameras displaying the ship's blind spots come up on the screen. "Probably some hotshot smuggler who hasn't learned how to play the game yet. Hold on, I can do this neat trick where I loop an 8-bit melody over their comms, let me show you."  
  
      "Hailing unmarked vessel. Please identify yourself immediately or leave the premises. You are not cleared for docking, I repeat, you are not cleared for docking."

      "Traffic control doesn't seem to find this funny," Maya says nervously. Monty gives a half shrug as he types into his terminal. He's more than a little surprised when the screen suddenly flickers. "What was that?"

      "I don't know, it was weird," Monty says. He gives up on trying to send annoying music to the unknown ship's comms and turns his attention to traffic control instead, wanting a new perspective on the situation. Over the speakers, the one-sided conversation continues.  
  
      "Should we tell the others to board, just in case?" Maya asks over the traffic controller's increasingly panicked commands.  
  
Monty frowns down at her screen, only half of his brain following along with her words while the other concentrates on cracking TonDC's firewall. A moment later, he's pulled up the spaceport's own cameras. Both he and Maya freeze at the video feed that plays - though it's blurry and in black and white, there's no mistaking the sight on the screen in front of them: a pointed, ridged hull sharp enough to ram another spaceship and tear its side open, stark designs painted over rusted metal. A monster of a ship for a monster of a crew. _Reapers!_

Before Monty can reply, Maya's already sprinted off, throwing open the door to the bridge. Her footsteps fade away almost instantly, but he knows exactly where she's going - to the back of the ship, where some of the others are supervising the Phoenix's refueling.

 _Get it together_ , Monty tells himself. The hand that reaches up for his comm shakes.

      "Nate," he says. "Nathan, come in."

There is only static on the other end of the channel.  
  
      "Nathan? Bellamy? Clarke?"  
  
His stomach plummets as he realizes the traffic controller's channels have also gone silent. The reapers have jammed them.

He can get past it, but it'll take time, time he doesn't have. Monty sucks in deep, rattling breaths as his fingers fly over the dashboard, tapping out typos he has to then backspace away because his hands are shaking too hard.

Wick appears at his side like a ghost, clutching his ribs and panting heavily, having run to the bridge.

      "Catch me up, Monty," he says between breaths, craning his neck to look at what Monty's already done.

      "Comms are jammed, I can't get it down fast enough," he stutters. Wick's hand lands on his shoulder, warm and heavy.  
  
      "You got this. Breathe, Monty. We'll figure it out."  
  
      "They're going to be trapped in there," Monty says, even as he throws everything he's got against the reaper jam. "Once the reapers get into the hangar, it's all over."  
  
      "It's not over until I say it's over," Raven says on Monty's other side, staring out the windshield grimly, but just then the lights out in the hangar flash blindingly bright and then burn out. For a brief moment the only illumination comes from the blue glow of the dashboard, and then sirens start to blare and red emergency lights flicker on, basking the hangar in an eerie, bloody light.  
  
Under the crimson light, there is another ship slowly rising up into a nearby port. Monty tears his eyes away, feeling bile rise up in his throat. His code processes, and then the communications jam shatters into pieces. It's already too late. Voices scream into Monty's earpiece, so loud and distorted by panic that he yelps and tears it out.

He staggers backwards from the dashboard, feeling his chest constrict with pressure. He finds something warm and solid at his back - turns, and returns the tight embrace Jasper's there to give him. He smells shampoo nearby, feels a clammy hand slip into his and squeeze tightly. Maya. He loves them both so much it hurts.

      "We'll get them back," Jasper vows. He makes the promise the way Jasper usually does things, with all of him, all the air in his lungs and all the conviction in his voice. It's one note of home that Monty hopes he never loses. "We're not leaving without them."  
  
      "Are you fucking kidding me?"  
  
Monty twists around in Jasper's hug just enough to see the scowling blond boy that's usually standing guard near Wells - _Dax_ , he thinks the name is. They haven't spoken much, mostly because he didn't seem particularly friendly. By the twisted, horrified expression on Dax's face now, he hasn't gotten any more interested in making friends since Monty last spoke to him.

      "Got a problem, Dax?" Raven snaps.  
  
      "Yeah I got a problem, Reyes. You want to go up against fucking reapers? If there are any brains on this ship, we should be taking off while we still can!"  
  
      "We can't leave our crew behind. Either of them," Harper says, crossing her arms over her chest and staring down the blonde boy that stands two heads taller than her.  
  
      "Then we're gonna die with them," Dax says, mirroring her hostile posture. "Is that what you want? Because that's not what I want. This isn't what I fucking signed up for."  
  
      "Then you can go lock yourself in the toilet, maybe the reapers won't be able to tell you apart from all the other pieces of shit," Raven says with vitriol.  
  
      "Back down, all of you!" Wells suddenly yells, stepping forward and pushing everyone apart. "We're not accomplishing anything by fighting each other. Dax, in the absence of our Commanders, I'm the senior officer and my orders are that we stay. Monty, is there anything else you can do?"  
  
As much as Monty wants to hide his face in his best friend's shoulder and stop thinking until this is all over, there's no time. He pulls away, gives Wells a brisk nod, and returns to the dashboard. Raven and Harper are staring at the screen. Their horrified faces, cast into deep shadow by the dim lighting, tell him all he needs to know.

      "Ducts," Wick shouts suddenly, grabbing Monty by the shoulders as he approaches. "Ventilation ducts. Monty, every spaceport should have blueprints in the maintenance records. Can you get those?"  
  
      "Have you met me?" he responds automatically, his voice coming out braver than he feels.  
  
      "That's my boy," Wick responds, clapping him on the shoulder. "Get those as fast as you can. We can direct the others through the vents until they reach the hangar."  
  
      "And once they're in the hangar?" Harper asks, the only one of them willing to brave the question no one else wants to ask. Monty steadfastly refuses to look at the screens, at the reapers that are now surely pouring out of their ship like blood pours out of a wound.  
  
      "Leave that to me," Raven all but snarls. "Jasper. A little birdy told me you're good at chemistry?"  
  
Monty blocks the others out as they spring into action, focused only on skimming through TonDC's records, occasionally pulling up increasingly classified folders only for Wick to shake his head and say ' _next_ '. The other man's presence is remarkably grounding - Monty recalls enough of his apprenticeship on the ARK to remember the older engineer was always good at keeping his head about when the ARK drilled them on emergency procedures.  
  
Monty's usually pretty good at staying calm too.

But not when reapers are involved, and not when Nathan's in danger. Monty wouldn't wish reapers on his worst enemy, let alone his _lover._

      "That one," Wick says suddenly, stopping him before he passes over a file. Monty opens it up to full scale on the screens and finds himself going dizzy staring at a maze of dotted lines and tiny measurements. Wick cracks his knuckles grimly and adjust the comms in his ears. "Phoenix, come in," he says, using the channel every one of their crew is tuned into. For a moment there is only crackling, and then Bellamy's voice answers, low and out of breath.  
  
      "You _again_. You're impossible to get rid of. Like a damn cockroach, aren't you?"  
  
      "This damn cockroach is trying to bring you back to your ship, so be nice please," Wick retorts, his eyes darting over the blueprint in front of him. "Where are you?"  
  
      "Phoenix, you have to take off," Clarke replies instead. Her voice is tired, resigned. "All the sectors are sealed off and there's reapers trying to get into ours. I'm sorry. We can't make it back."  
  
      "Yes you can," Monty blurts out. "The ventilation ducts."  
  
      "Tell me where you are and I'll tell you if there's a path or not," Wick replies. Another moment of static-y silence passes.

      "All right," Bellamy responds. "We're in the corridor leading to the clinic, passed the spaceport's agro station a minute ago."  
  
While Wick scans the blueprint, Monty butts in on the comm.  
  
      "Nathan?" he asks.  
  
      "I'm okay. We're all okay."  
  
The unspoken _for now_ hangs between them like a chasm.

      "Found you," Wick interrupts suddenly. "There's a maintenance closet on your left, pry off the vent cover in that and start crawling."  
  
      "We're all going to be okay," Monty says, but the words sound hollow, even to him, and then he makes the mistake of looking out the windshield.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **SPACEPORT THIRTY-SIX coined TON DC, Sector S20-M6. Allegiance: NONE.**

 

 

  
When Clarke was eight years old, her father left on an assignment to find more habitable planets for the quickly-growing ARK to terraform. It was an assignment scheduled to take over two years, and even at her young age, Clarke understood the importance of two years. She also understood that it was the Council, and by inclusion, her own mother, who had given this particular assignment to her father's crew instead of someone else's crew.

      "Would you rather someone else's dad left?" Jake had asked her after dinner on that last night they had together, while she had clung to his legs and glared daggers at Abby.  
  
      " _Yes_ ," Clarke had said, all shaking fists and harshly spit opposition. The next morning, rather than face her mother, she'd grabbed Wells' hand and taken off, telling her dear friend they were going to play hide and seek.  
  
As he'd counted to twenty, she'd crawled into a vent carelessly left uncovered by some engineering apprentice, and young Clarke kept going until she could no longer hear Wells' voice at all, only the machine hum all around her.

They found her countless hours later.

Clarke doesn't remember much about the rescue, only the gnaw of hunger in her belly and her confusion at the sudden bright lights and her father pressing her face to his chest, somehow both gently and fiercely tight.

This time, Clarke knows Jake Griffin won't be waiting at the end of the tunnel.

But the rest of the experience - her hands and knees banging along the freezing cold metal of the ventilation duct, keeping her head down to avoid hitting the ceiling, the seemingly endless twists that Wick directs them through - the rest is uncomfortably familiar.

By the time Wick's instructions lead them to a grilled dead end that Bellamy kicks out, the sirens have fallen deathly silent and all Clarke can hear is the ragged breathing of her companions, and her own pulse thrumming in her ear. Up ahead, silhouetted in the vent's opening, Bellamy curses softly, and she opens her mouth to tell him to be quiet, when he suddenly disappears.

She scrambles forward, leans over the edge, and finds him crouched several feet below. The vent has opened up onto the catwalks above the hangar. Underneath the gridded platform, Clarke can see the wicked reaper ship, and a little further along, the _Phoenix._

      "All clear," Bellamy's quiet voice tells them. Clarke feels Miller nudge her foot and keeps crawling, drawing up her knees and kicking her legs out into freedom. "You can drop, I'll catch you."  
  
Clarke lets herself go, and true to his word, Bellamy softens the fall, catching her with a low grunt and then setting her feet down on the catwalk soundlessly. His fingers brush her wrist where her flightsuit has ridden up as he lets go - his hands are freezing. Clarke supposes all of theirs are. Crawling through a cold vent will do that to a person.

Their eyes meet, and she tries to thank him without words. Something in the softening of his frown lets her know he's understood what she isn't saying, and Clarke steps back.

Monroe drops next without warning, too soon for Bellamy to prepare. A muffled groan echoes from her as she sags in Bellamy's arms, and Clarke turns to her as she struggles to stand.

      "You okay?"  
  
Monroe grimaces as she adjusts her weight onto her other leg.

      "I think I twisted my ankle, Commander," she whispers back. A moment later, a quiet thud announces Miller's arrival, and all four of them are crouched on the catwalk as Clarke slips Monroe's boot off and inspects the injured foot.  
  
      "There's not a lot I can do right now," Clarke says with a grim shake of her head as she inches the boot back on before the ankle swells. "Keep your weight off of it. Don't take the boot off again until we're back on the Phoenix."  
  
      "I'll help her," Miller volunteers immediately, passing the heavy gun on his back to Monroe. But before they can make further plans, there is a sudden crash from below them, and they all drop to the surface of the catwalk and still. Through the metal grid underneath her palms, Clarke can see the huge gate between the hangar and the rest of the spaceport, propped open with a jagged piece of metal.  
  
At first, only the sounds of struggle reach them. Several more agonizing seconds pass before the sights appear as well, and Clarke doesn't realize she's been holding her breath until her lungs start to burn. She exhales shakily as she sees the hulking forms of reapers, dragging weakly kicking prisoners behind them. Some of them are completely limp, heads lolling on their shoulders, and still others are simply crying out, too exhausted to keep fighting back.

      "We have to save them," Clarke says, the determined whisper bursting out from between her lips. Before she even has a plan, she knows this is something she has to do.  
  
      "It's too late," Bellamy responds, turning his head so he speaks almost directly into her ear, his words barely audible. "They're goners."  
  
      "This can't be the end," Clarke responds, fixing him with a glare. Even by the hangar's dim red lights, she can see the hollow disbelief in his eyes. No one really knows what reapers do with their prisoners - some say there's a secret slave trade, others insist the monsters are cannibals, still others insist they are a new and enlightened subspecies of human and throw themselves into the way whenever the raid sirens ring.  
  
All they really know is that no one who is taken by a reaper is ever seen again - and that is enough for Clarke to know she needs to step in.

      "We're all going to die, but there's no sense in making it _easy_ for them," Monroe argues quietly, her face pale and drawn with pain, tinged crimson by the emergency lights.  
  
      "You're not," Clarke says. "Miller, take her back to the Phoenix. Get out of here. Wells will insist he won't make a good Commander, don't listen to him when he does."  
  
      "What, and you're going to singlehandedly take on a reaper gang?" Bellamy says.

      "If I have to, yes," Clarke says shortly. "Now _go_."  
  
Bellamy lets loose a stream of curses that would probably give her mother a heart attack, and seems to make up his mind as Miller reluctantly gathers Monroe up in his arms and sets off, far more graceful and silent than his bulk would have you believe.

      "I'm coming with you," Bellamy whispers, following Clarke down another catwalk in the opposite direction.  
  
      "What the hell are you guys doing?" Wick asks, his voice static and confused in Clarke's ear. "You're heading in the wrong direction."  
  
      "We're going to traffic control, Wick. We're giving the rest of you a chance to get out," Clarke says, side-eyeing Bellamy. His eyes widen when she includes him in the phrase, like he didn't expect her to give in nearly this easily.  
  
      "What, you're agreeing? Just like that?" he asks in a sharp whisper. "No tantrums or foot stomping?"  
  
Clarke pushes his face away with the flat of her palm, because she's so irritated she has no words left for him. Still, she's grateful for his presence at her back, silent and steady, if only because she knows no reaper will surprise her from behind.

The traffic control tower stands in the center of the hangar, with catwalks radiating outwards from it. As they get closer, Clarke can see the door open, the seal torn apart by the same claws that she saw reaching for her from under another door earlier. The tower is dark and silent where it should be lit and full of activity.

      "Doesn't look like there'll be any survivors," Bellamy whispers to her grimly, and she shivers both at his words and at the feeling of his breath warm on her ear. They have to stick close together to stay quiet.  
  
      "You think any reapers stuck around?" Clarke asks, her voice barely louder than an exhaled breath.  
  
      "Only one way to find out," Bellamy responds, and he rests his free hand on the pistol in her waistband. There's an unexpected concern for her safety in his brown eyes. Clarke follows the line of his arm, sighs quietly and pulls the pistol out. Beside her, Bellamy raises his hand to his ear and radios in. "We're about to head into traffic control. Get ready."  
  
      "Be careful," Monty responds. "Both of you."  
  
Clarke suddenly feels a rush of affection for the young boy she hardly got a chance to speak to, but who is still wishing her luck. She hopes Miller can get Monroe back safely in the chaos she and Bellamy are about to create.

      "Thanks Monty," Clarke whispers back. "Can you do one last thing for me?"  
  
      "Anything."  
  
      "Can you give me the number of the port the reapers are docked at?"

A moment of silence as he checks.

      "21. Guys... What exactly are you planning?"  
  
Clarke peeks over the edge of the catwalk, is pleased to find that the door to the reapers' ship lies open, the prisoners still lined up outside of it. She can only pray they get away in the confusion - there is not much more she can do at this distance.  
  
      "We're gonna do a little impromptu floating," Clarke whispers, and she's pleased to see the gleam of recognition in Bellamy's eyes as he figures out exactly what she means.  
  
      "Brave, princess," he whispers, the glow of the red lights making his toothy grin ten times more feral. Clarke clicks the safety off her pistol and takes a deep breath. Bellamy shoulders his own gun, and then they're approaching the traffic control tower, footsteps barely more than a soft patter on metal.  
  
Bellamy's gun has a flashlight on it, so he takes the lead, illuminating the dark room. Clarke sees smashed projectors, darkened video panels, smeared blood on the floor and then - most horrifyingly - the bodies.

The one nearest to them is still slumped in his chair, staring lifelessly at the ceiling. His face is hardly recognizable from the giant metal star protruding out of his cheekbone. Clarke feels her breath hitch in her throat - even in all the years as a medical apprentice, she never saw anything to make her stomach churn like this.

Even Bellamy swears beside her, swinging the muzzle of the gun away to illuminate a different part of the room. In the wide sweep of the flashlight, Clarke sees glittering eyes - then a slow, predatory blink.

      "Bellamy!" she yells as the reaper drops the body it had been feeding on. She raises her pistol, takes aim, and shoots. The first two shots go wild, then adrenaline steadies her shaking hands and sharpens her focus and the third bullet catches it in the eye.  
  
      "Holy fuck, Griffin," he says in a ragged voice, staring at the dead reaper in the corner with undisguised horror. Then he straightens and looks to the door as they hear shouts from far below.  
  
      "Bellamy? Clarke?" Monty says, panicked over the comms.  
  
      "What just happened?" That would be Monroe.  
  
      "Dammit Griffin, they heard us," Bellamy curses, hitching the gun over his shoulder and shoving the dead traffic controller off his chair. Clarke jumps back from the body, wincing at the thud it makes as it hits the ground, and watches him shove the chair against the door.  
  
      "We're alive, we just surprised a reaper," Clarke says over the comms, and then to Bellamy, "It was going to jump you, did you want me to let it kill you?"  
  
      "You should have hit it over the head with something instead," Bellamy snaps back, and Clarke almost wants to shoot him because _she just saved his life and this is the thanks she gets?_  
  
      "Oh shut up," she cries out, shoving her pistol back into her belt. "Monty, Wick, the systems are down, how do I get them up and running again?"  
  
Clarke is only dimly aware of Bellamy building a barricade behind her as she follows the instructions. As the computers whir to life and cracked holoscreens glow blue, she realizes all the barricade will accomplish is to give them enough time to eject the reaper ship.

But the ones not aboard the ship will get through the barricade eventually. This is the end of the line for Bellamy and her.

      "Port 21," Monty reminds her. Clarke holds her breath as she keys in the command. From one of the few remaining video feeds in the tower, she sees the reaper ship begin to descend into its airlock. The prisoners are forgotten as reapers run back to their posts, and Clarke considers it a small victory. The lock closes over the reaper ship, and she imagines it opening on the other side, exposing the open ship to space.  
  
It is a cruel and painful death, and Clarke wouldn't have it any other way.  
  
Her lungs start to burn, and she exhales. There is a thud from outside, and she turns to meet Bellamy's eyes, dark and knowing. _This is what a creature that knows it is about to die looks like_ , she thinks. He reaches out with the hand that isn't on his gun, and Clarke takes it wordlessly.  
  
Bellamy moves to sit on the floor, back leaned against the side of the desk, as far away from the bodies as they can get, and Clarke is pulled down with him. She can feel the warmth of his body pressed along the length of her arm and thigh. His fingers are shaking ever so slightly. Clarke suspects hers are as well, and she squeezes tightly, finding comfort in the answering twitch. They say nothing as vicious blows rattle Bellamy's barricade.  
  
No one ever wants to die alone.

 

 

 

 

 

> **SPACEPORT THIRTY-SIX coined TON DC, Sector S20-M6. Allegiance: NONE.**

 

 

 

      "I need hairspray," Jasper says, hands fluttering nervously, his Adam's apple bobbing so obviously when he swallows that it is almost comical.  
  
Raven isn't laughing.

      "The fuck will hairspray do?" she snarls, sweeping all the junk off her worktable with one arm so they have room to work.  
  
      "Flamethrower," Jasper babbles, and Raven's eyes light up, because that actually sounds like a lot of fun... Or would be, if they had any hairspray.  
  
      "Need another idea, baby Einstein," Raven mutters, pacing behind her worktable. On the other side, Jasper mirrors her. "Hairspray was hard to come by on the ARK, you really think we have any here?"  
  
      "Okay, okay, fine," Jasper says, throwing his hands up in the air. "But we should use the blowtorch for something."  
  
      "What about a different fuel source?" Raven asks. She starts rattling off everything they've got in the boiler room, Jasper shakes his head at each, his pacing forming tighter and tighter loops.  
  
      "We need a localized flame, if we use any of those the fumes will blow up the entire hangar."  
  
      "Windshield fluid," she says instead, and Jasper whirls around in excitement and ends up slamming his hip against the worktable. He howls out something that Raven thinks is approval, so she runs out of the workshop and back to the bridge. Wick and Monty are huddled around the comms and the spaceport blueprints, while Harper has Wells and a few of the others cleaning and arming guns with furious efficiency. Dax glowers at her as she passes, but she ignores him, pleased to see that he's cooperating with the greater good for now.  
  
Raven sweeps past all of them and to the GPS she has still only partially reinstalled back into the mainframe. She thanks her past self for getting distracted before having the opportunity to tighten all the bolts on the metal paneling, because now it allows her to tear it off and remove the GPS, giving her room to crawl into the auxiliary engine cavity.  
  
      "What are you doing, wrench monkey?" she hears Wick ask from outside as she turns on a pocket flashlight and peers at the wires and tubes above her.  
  
      "None of your business, Wick," she calls out, loudly so he can hear her. "You just focus on bringing Clarke back home."

She finds the plastic tubing that connects the windshield sprayers to the container of washer fluid, and crows victoriously - it's still just over half full. Raven's pretty sure you can set a lot of things on fire with several liters of washer fluid.

She disconnects it from the tubing and hauls it out with her, arms straining with the weight. Something in her chest twinges with pain, and she stops for a moment, pressing a palm against the curve of her breast. She curses the little hole in her heart and pokes her head out of the engine cavity.

      "Wells," she calls, and his head snaps up instantly, eyebrows furrowed in concern as he finds her. "Can you help me with this?"

Raven Reyes has asked for help perhaps five times in her entire life, but right now she is scared and her best friend is stranded in a spaceport overrun by reapers and she can swallow her pride if it means she can get to work with Jasper faster.

      "Where to?" Wells grunts as he heaves the container into his arms. Raven pauses for a moment, tugs out the fans she installed in the GPS, and motions him back to her workshop.  
  
In her absence, Jasper has methodically gone through every chemical she has haphazardly tossed into her cabinets. She's pleased to see he's laid out a fire extinguisher on the table, in case something goes wrong. _Always use protection, kids_ , Sinclair used to say as he supervised her and the other zero-g hopefuls. (They don't have time for something to go wrong, but it's the thought that counts.)

      "Okay, lets do this," she says, rubbing her palms together to warm them as Wells sets the washer fluid down on her table. "Thanks, Wells."

      "We need a method to get the fluid into-" Jasper begins.  
  
      "Done," Raven says, holding up the fans she's cannibalized from the GPS. He breaks out into a crooked grin.  
  
      "You do the mechanical part, I'll take care of the chemical," he says, and Raven gets out the blowtorch and starts tinkering. _Please come home safe_ , she thinks, as though Clarke can hear her thoughts somehow.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry not sorry for another cliffhanger. Find me on tumblr as [kindclaws](www.kindclaws.tumblr.com), I'm v friendly and we can cry about Bellamy's face together. 
> 
> I have asked a multitude of people if washer fluid is flammable and gotten a multitude of answers, and tbh idk if washer fluid would even be a thing in space, but fuck that, I'm still more scientifically accurate than the 100 canon. I do what I want.


	8. Farewell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When we last left off, our lovely heroes were minding their own (illicit) business on TonDC spaceport when it was attacked by reapers. 
> 
> The separated crews were finally working together to survive/reunite. Miller was helping an injured Monroe return to the ship, Clarke and Bellamy were trapped in a traffic control tower with reapers banging on the door, and Raven and Jasper started using spare parts to build a very sketchy flamethrower, because reasons.
> 
> And now...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: canon-typical levels of violence + blood, description of injury + medical attention.
> 
> This week's weather is: [What Are You Going To Do When You Are Not Saving The World?](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpBnxR2zPWk) by Hans Zimmer (Man Of Steel OST). Phew, that's a bit of a mouthful.

 

 

 

> **SPACEPORT THIRTY-SIX coined TON DC, Sector S20-M6. Allegiance: NONE.**

 

 

When the gunshot rings out in the hangar, Miller startles and nearly slips on all the blood below him.

Monroe holds onto his neck tighter as he curses and grabs the railing for support, her legs dropping as he lets go of them. She's speaking into her comms before he's even balanced himself, only a hint of panic in her voice as she demands to know if the others are all right.  
  
      "We're alive," Clarke's tired but steady voice comes through in both of their ears. Miller looks down at the reapers, energized by the sound of the shot, and wonders how much longer she'll be able to say that.

      "You okay?" Miller asks Monroe as she adjusts her weight onto her good foot with a wince. He wonders if the blood feels as sticky under her soles as it does under his.  
  
      "Yeah," she says quietly. "But not okay enough to get past that."  
  
Miller swallows thickly, looking ahead. _That_ is the gaping hole in the staircase they were supposed to use to get down to the _Phoenix_ , but the yellow caution tape blocking it off and the dead technician whose body lies limp several meters below them make it clear that it's not an option anymore.

They have reached, for all intents and purposes, a dead end. The _Phoenix's_ sleek brown silhouette stands right underneath them, but there's no way for him and Monroe to get down without breaking multiple bones, and in the company of the reapers actively searching for the source of the shot, a broken bone is a death sentence. Miller hesitates before turning on his comms.  
  
      "Monty, Wick," he says quietly. "We got a problem. We're right above you but we can't get down."  
  
      "What do you mean, you can't get down?" Wick asks indignantly. "The blueprints say there's a staircase right there."  
  
      "A staircase in repair," Monroe buts in, her own face pale and determined as she looks over the edge. "And unless the repair guy can repair his broken neck, it's not going to be passable any time soon."  
  
      "Okay, we'll look for another route," Monty says, and then Miller hears Clarke on the comms. "One sec, Nathan, we need to eject the ship first."  
  
He helps Monroe hobble back in the direction they came from. They're both scanning the maze of catwalks and quietly discussing where to turn, when suddenly the reaper ship starts to lower.

      "Oh man," Monroe breathes out, clinging to his shoulder as they both watch the reapers descend into chaos. "They did it. They actually did it."  
  
Instead of celebrating, Miller grabs her chin and turns her face towards a group of reapers just entering the hangar now. Monroe swears quietly at the sight of them, and the realization that although Clarke and Bellamy have succeeded in eliminating the ship, not all the reapers are gone. And in fact, some of them are thundering up the stairs to the catwalks, headed towards the traffic control tower.  
  
He and Monroe hit the floor as the reapers burst onto their level, snarling viciously as they approach the tower. They're a good distance away, Miller thinks, but the maze-like quality of the catwalks is just as much of a disadvantage as an advantage, and Monroe still can't put any weight on her ankle.

      "Bellamy," Miller says into his comms. "They're getting closer, you have to get out."  
  
      "We made a barricade," he hears his Commander respond. "As long as we keep them focused on us, you have time to get to the Phoenix. Got it?"  
  
      "What about you?" Miller asks, already knowing the answer. "You're seriously going to pull this shit on me, Blake? You _just_ reunited with Octavia, you're gonna go and die on us already? Are you fucking kidding me?"  
  
      "Just get to the damn ship, Miller," Bellamy snarls, and Miller is not usually one to break orders, but one look at Monroe's determined face and he knows neither of them is going to listen to that command.  
  
      "Sorry boss," Miller says, hoisting up his gun and propping it up on the railing to keep it steady. Beside him, Monroe does the same. "No can do."  
  
      "Nathan, where are you now?" Monty asks, and Miller almost loses his resolve. He considers turning off his comms, because he almost can't bear to tell Monty he's decided he's not coming back to him, but then he thinks of dying without his voice in his ear, and realizes he's not strong enough for that.  
  
The reapers are ten meters away from the traffic control tower. Five, now two.  
  
      "On three," he tells Monroe. "Three, two, one."

They shoot. Two reapers fall, others follow, but not enough.

      "Miller, they're heading towards us," Monroe says, when the reapers seem to realize where the shots are coming from, and turn their attention away from the traffic control tower and towards them.  
  
      "That's the plan," Miller says, hoping his voice betrays none of the pain inside.  
  
      "Nathan, please, get out of there!" Monty yells into his headset. "Please!"  
  
      "Bellamy," Miller says instead. "The coast is clear for you. Better leave while you can."  
  
His gun clicks without resistance. He pulls the trigger several more times before accepting that he's run out of ammo. They would have packed more, probably, if this wasn't supposed to be a simple stop at a safe spaceport.

      "Got anything else on you?" Monroe asks gamely. He nods as he discards the gun and pulls out a smaller pistol. The bullets in this one likely won't make it past the reapers' armour, so he has to be more careful with it, more disciplined with his aim. He remembers learning how to shoot under Bellamy's tutelage, in those early days after they had just escaped the ARK, remembers the advice he'd been given.  
  
_Shoot to get yourself more time_ , past Bellamy says in his head. _We're not killers. Your goal isn't to murder, just to keep yourself safe. But if they're trying to kill you, don't play around. Shoot for the head._  
  
The reapers barrel down the catwalks towards him and Monroe. Out of the corner of his eye, Miller sees Bellamy fighting off one or two stragglers, sees Clarke topple over the railing with a cry and fall, nothing but air beneath her, but he has already done all he can for them.

      "Monty," he says through gritted teeth as he lines up his sights. "I'm sorry. I love you. _I'm so sorry_."  
  
And that's when Raven and Jasper leap up onto the catwalks behind the reapers and everything goes up in flames; red, orange, and yellow. He thinks he hears Monty's voice in his ears, but he can't discern anything clear over the ensuing chaos. He throws his arms up to shield himself from the heat and feels them blister through the flightsuit, and there is screaming, but he is not sure if it is the reapers or Monty or himself. Perhaps it is all of them, united in this last, hellish moment of fear and agony.

 

 

 

 

 

> **SPACEPORT THIRTY-SIX coined TON DC, Sector S20-M6. Allegiance: NONE.**

 

 

They drop the _Phoenix's_ door as soon as Raven and Jasper finish turning Raven's blowtorch into a monstrosity of a flamethrower that takes both of them to wield.

      "You get Miller and Monroe," Wells tells them. "Harper and I will go for Clarke and Bellamy."

      "Wells!" Raven calls out, just as he's about to turn away. Her eyes are blazing, and for a moment his breath catches in his throat at the intensity of the stare he can't break. "Don't be a dumbass."  
  
      "You take care too," he replies, swallowing thickly.   
  
Octavia shows up as well, bearing a wicked sharp kitchen knife and a violence in her eyes that Wells doesn't want to argue with, so he says nothing when she follows right on his heels. He can't see Bellamy from the floor of the hangar, but Clarke is perched on top of a spaceship. She's huddled in on herself and Wells is certain she didn't make the drop from the catwalks without severe injury, but he'll have to remember to yell at her later because there are reapers gathered around the base of the spaceship, trying to claw their way up.

Harper and Octavia are, despite their size and stature, terrifyingly efficient at dispatching reapers. Next to them, Wells feels off-balance, uncomfortable with the weight of the gun in his hands. He took arms training as part of his pilot education and excelled at it like he excelled at everything else the academy could think to throw at him, but he's never been in a situation like this. It's nothing like the lessons.

 _The things I do for you, Clarke_ , he thinks as he raises the gun to his eyeline and pulls the trigger.

She slides off the edge of the spaceship and crumples at the bottom. Wells hears the cry of pain she doesn't entirely manage to suppress and runs to her, knowing Harper and Octavia have his back.

      "Clarke, I'm going to kill you," he says, pulling her up. There are tear tracks on her face and her front is covered in blood and he sees a flash of white bone peeking through the skin of the arm she's clutching to her chest.  
  
      "Blake," she gasps instead, limping as he pulls her forward. "I - I left him up there."  
  
      "We'll get him," Wells says, though if reapers were any less horrifying he thinks he'd seriously consider leaving the hijacking Commander stranded in TonDC.  
  
      "Bellamy!" Octavia yells, far louder than Clarke, her sharp eyes scanning the catwalks above. The limp body of a reaper plummets over a railing and crashes on a nearby spaceship, leaving a dent that makes it clear that if it wasn't dead before, it definitely is now. Then a messy mop of dark hair appears after it, peeking over the edge of the catwalk.

      "Yes?" Bellamy asks in a mild voice that seems entirely inappropriate considering the fact that he's covered in blood and viscera. At his side, Clarke sags slightly in relief, and Wells has to wonder exactly when she started caring.

      "Find Raven and Jasper," Wells shouts up at him before that thought can get out of hand. "Get everyone back to the ship!"

Bellamy vanishes from above and Wells hears running footsteps along the catwalks.  
  
      "The prisoners," Clarke says, clutching at Wells' arm with her uninjured hand. "Are they all right?"  
  
Wells looks over his shoulder to find the kidnapped TonDC citizens helping each other out of their binds, standing up with hollow eyes and disbelieving expressions.

      "They will be," Wells says. "But if we don't get you to the med bay, your arm won't be."  
  
      "Can't feel a thing," Clarke says, and Wells knows she's lying because she's squinting a little bit, the skin around her eyes tight with pain. He shakes his head and helps her along. Octavia falls in step on her other side, and he shoots her a grateful look over Clarke's head.  
  
They're almost back to the _Phoenix_ when a reaper leaps at them out of nowhere. Wells has his arm full of Clarke, Harper is knocked backwards, and it's Octavia who comes to the rescue, jumping in between them and flinging her kitchen knife as easily as one might chuck a throwing dart. It buries deep into the reaper's side, but it only slows it down for another moment. Blood dribbles down the reaper's chin as it continues to stagger forward, crazed eyes imbued with renewed purpose. There's nowhere to go.

Wells has just enough time to think _this is it_ , before a gunshot rings out and a bloody hole opens up in the reaper's throat. They turn towards the _Phoenix's_ door to find Lincoln swaying dangerously from the recoil, leaning half onto the edge of the door, half onto a shaking Maya. He looks straight at Wells, and then at Clarke, and lowers the gun.

      "You saved my life. Now I saved yours," he says, voice low and gravelly, and then his eyes roll backward and he pitches forward and Octavia rushes to catch him.   
  
Raven and Jasper and Bellamy return a moment later, shielding Miller and Monroe, who are both sporting burns on their arms but are otherwise alive. It's too good to be true. Wells can't believe all of them survived.

      "Time to go," Monty says into the comms, his voice ringing in everyone's ear. "A nearby GROUNDER ship heard the distress signal and they're coming with relief, so we'd better be long gone when they get here."  
  
      "They should thank us, not arrest us. We did all the dirty work for them," Raven mutters next to Wells, but she's grinning at him nonetheless and she looks far too proud of the homemade flamethrower for Wells to be comfortable. He kind of wants to kiss her, and then immediately wipes that thought from his mind because it is most definitely not the time. Afterwards - maybe, he will let himself think about the soft things in life.  
  
      "All aboard," Bellamy hollers, shooing them all into the cargo hold, and he gives Wells a nod as they split ways - Bellamy heading to the bridge to supervise their getaway, Wells escorting everyone injured to the med bay. He's pleasantly surprised as he sees the two crews mingling as one, the reaper attack having torn down the prejudices that tainted their interactions just one day ago.  
  
He's watched Clarke in the med bay long enough that he's able to follow her careful direction to set up Lincoln comfortable on his cot and treat Miller and Monroe's burns with a salve.

      "What's the verdict, doc?" Miller asks intently. "Can I still pilot? Don't want to leave Harper doing it on her own for long."

      "I'll be there to relieve you as soon as I make sure Clarke's taken care of herself," Wells promises.  
  
      "I'm fine, Wells. Miller, I'll think you'll be okay to head to the bridge now, if the pain isn't too bad. The burns aren't too serious," Clarke says, examining each of them in turn. "The salve is left over from our ARK days, so it's high quality, it'll work quickly. I'll redo your bandages every few hours, got it?"  
  
      "You're not going to be able to redo anything if you don't take care of your arm now," Wells points out sternly. But Clarke refuses to even look at the xray machine until Miller and Monroe have left and Lincoln is pretending to sleep in the other cot, and it's only with threats to dilute the coffee and get Raven to shut off hot showers that Wells convinces her to let him help her.  
  
Her arm is shattered in two places, and he can tell by the unhappy slant of her eyebrows that it's not an injury with a quick fix.  
  
      "This is what I get for jumping off the catwalks, I guess," she mutters darkly.

      "Clarke," Wells says, forcing her chin up so she has to look at him. "It'll be okay. You saved all of us. That's really impressive. It's okay to admit you need our help now."  
  
      "I shouldn't have to," Clarke mutters angrily in between instructions on how to split the bone. "I'm not a very good Commander if I can't even keep everyone safe - first Lexa, and now this-"  
  
      "Clarke!" Wells says again. "What happened with Lexa, what happened today - you can't beat yourself up for any of that. You deserve better than that."  
  
She doesn't get a chance to argue with him, because a moment later, their comms crackle in their ears.

      "How's the arm, Griffin?" Bellamy asks.  
  
      "It's been better," she responds. Wells raises an eyebrow at her, and she makes a face in response.  
  
      "The reaper ship's up ahead. Systems aren't finding any signs of life, but Raven's pushing to blow it up anyway so another gang doesn't decide to take it over. What do you say?"  
  
Clarke eyes Wells for a moment, and he only shrugs, silently telling her the decision is hers to make. She lets out a heavy breath, and nods slowly.  
  
      "I say we blow it up. The Phoenix has plenty of unused missiles. Let Raven push the button, it'll make her day."  
  
Wells snorts at that, and even Clarke cracks a smile as he bends over and tries to hide his amusement behind his hand.

      "He wouldn't have asked my opinion a day ago," Clarke says once the channel's shut.  
  
      "Nope," Wells says.  
  
      "Would I be right in assuming someone ambushed him the way you ambushed me, telling us to play nice with each other?" Clarke asks.  
  
He shrugs good-naturedly and keeps binding her wrist.

      "It was worth a shot," Wells says gamely. From somewhere else in the ship, they hear a reverberating boom, like a cannon being blown. Somewhere out there, a reaper ship is exploding into pieces, and documented space is a little safer for the living. The dead are gone, and feel no hunger.

  
  


 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route from SPACEPORT THIRTY-SIX coined TON DC, approx Sector S20-M6. Allegiance: Blake/Griffin.**

 

 

Bellamy isn't much of an artist, but even he can see there's a certain appeal to the explosive demise of the reaper ship. At first there is a flash of light that nearly blinds everyone looking out the windshield, and he hears Octavia swearing lowly from his side. He has half a mind to chastise her for that, but he knows she'll only remind him who she picked up her vocabulary from, so instead he tightens the arm he has slung around her neck and blinks away the dark spots on his vision. 

After they start to fade and he can see again, he looks at the little pieces of shattered metal that remain of the reaper ship that brought so much death and destruction, and he breathes out. He can feel all the air leave his lungs and leave him just with a lingering soreness in his muscles and the exhaustion of the day's events. 

      "Guess it's time for us to head home, aye Commander?" Harper asks, her eyes still gazing through the windshield at the aftermath of the explosion. Octavia reaches up and squeezes the hand hanging off her shoulder.

      "Yeah," Bellamy says after a moment. "Time to go home."

If the others catch onto the distance in his voice, they say nothing of it. Sometimes it makes his heart ache, how good his crew is to him. Octavia allows him another few minutes of attention, then shoos him off, saying he needs to take a shower. 

Bellamy's only too happy to oblige, letting himself relax under the hot spray of water. Blood and grime swirls about his ankles before vanishing down the pipe, and he tries not to think too hard about the water recycling system.

After he's dried off, he goes looking for Clarke. A peek into the med bay reveals only Lincoln, still sleeping as his body works with the antibiotics they went so far to acquire, so he walks back out quietly.

He finds her not in the Commander's bunk, which seems to have been repurposed into a place where electronics go to die in creative ways, but in a smaller bunk belonging to general crew. It doesn't match up with his original impression of a haughty ARK princess - but then, little about her does. He saw her face when she thought they were going to die. It's... It's hard not to know someone after that.

She's lying on her bed, injured wrist tightly bound in the absence of a proper plaster cast, good hand lightly sketching in the margins of what looks like an anatomy guide. She must have taken a shower as well to rid herself of reaper blood, because her hair is damp and frizzing at the ends.

He knocks on the door though it's open, and her hand stills as she looks up.

      "Hey," he says. "Got a minute?"

      "Yeah, I'm just drawing. Everything okay?"

      "Everything's fine, you're just hard to track down. No Commander's cabin for you?"

      "Nah, Raven needed the space for her experiments. I don't mind this one instead, it puts me closer to the crew."

      "The crew you don't have," Bellamy says wryly.

Clarke huffs and looks away. There is a sad, distant smile on her face when she looks back.

      "You can come in, you know. You don't have to stand out there."

She sits up as Bellamy walks in, ducking through the door, and once he's inside he realizes the walls of her bunk are covered in grayscale drawings.

      "Woah," he says. "You drew these?"

      "Yeah," Clarke responds, her voice quiet. "I spent a lot of time in here last year, it gave me something to focus on."

Bellamy raises his hand and trails his fingertips along the cool metal on the edges of a drawing of forests, not close enough to touch but close enough that he retracts his hand bashfully a moment later.

      "They're really good," he says, his gaze sliding higher to various plants he vaguely recognizes from childhood Earth Skills classes on the ARK, then to images straight out of a dream or a nightmare - a two headed deer, a butterfly trailing stars behind it, a battered watch dripping dark fluid, and then the face of a man he can instantly tell bears more than a passing resemblance to Clarke.

      "Anyway," Clarke says abruptly. "What did you need me for?"

Bellamy steps away from the man drawn near the ceiling, where most people wouldn't think to look, and looks back to Clarke.

      "I ordered Harper to set course for Polis," he says. "It's been a riot flying with you, but it's time for us to return to our own ship."

Clarke snorts at that, and Bellamy's pleased to see that the shadows in her eyes have vanished. A few days ago he might not have cared if she was happy or not, but surviving a reaper attack together is apparently pretty high up on the list of ultimate bonding experiences.

      "You say that like it's been a vacation," she teases, and Bellamy allows a small smile of his own.

      "The Phoenix is worthy of a five star rating, I promise."

      "Five stars," Clarke scoffs, extending her uninjured arm and gesturing around her in a wide sweep. "We're in space, Blake. If I needed stars, I'd look out a porthole."

      "Yeah, yeah," Bellamy responds, turning to walk back out, one hand awkwardly scratching at the back of his neck. "Hey Griffin?"

      "Hmm?"

      "We don't have to split up right away when we get to Polis. My ship's gonna take a few days to repair anyway, so I'll stick around and help you find a crew."

      "Very generous of you, Bellamy Blake," Clarke says dryly. "I wouldn't have expected that from someone who hijacked my ship at gunpoint."

      "These are desperate times," Bellamy drawls, ducking out the door. He looks back, pauses to take in the sight of her sitting on her cot, the anatomy guide still open in front of her. "I needed a ship, you need my expertise in the criminal underworld, surely we can figure something out."

He's still smiling when he reaches the bridge.

      "You look funny," Jasper says, eyeing him from the bench at the back. "Doesn't he, Maya?"

Maya, who has her head in his lap, stirs sleepily and gives a vaguely affirmative response that Bellamy won't hold against her because she's clearly not awake enough to understand the question. Jasper, on the other hand, has no such excuse.

      "Do you want to reconsider that statement?" Bellamy asks mildly. Jasper seems to pause and think intently for a moment.

      "Yes," he says at last, rolling the word cautiously around his mouth.

Bellamy shakes his head gamely and continues on to the front, where Wells and Harper are now piloting as though they've been working off each other for years instead of hours, taking them closer and closer to the _Argonautica_. To... home.

  
...........................

  
Polis is being battered by a giant sandstorm when the _Phoenix_ eases into orbit, so Bellamy and his crew spend another restless night aboard.

This close to his ship, he can't help but feel impatient that they're still waiting, and by the time the sands have cleared enough for a landing the next morning, Bellamy is in a foul mood.

He snags Jasper's ever present goggles and ties a shirt around his mouth when he goes out, but the fading remnants of the sandstorm still batter as he makes his way across the plateau, one step backwards for every two steps he takes forwards against the raging wind.

The _Argonautica_ rises out of the dust like a shadow before him, and he gives a grim, feral smile as his gaze sweeps over the hole that remains like a wound in her side. The smile fades as he walks around and finds the ship door lowered. In his stomach, a gnawing uneasiness begins to rise.

He had Harper raise it when they fled Polis, he knows he gave the order and he knows she'd get it done. He walks up the ramp, more than half-buried in sand, and his insides twist as he finds the cargo hold not only covered in windblown sand but violently ransacked.

Bellamy traces his hands disbelievingly over upturned containers, all the smuggled valuables his crew had yet to deliver gone. So many jobs, incomplete. He knew the delay in deliveries caused by their unwitting detour aboard the _Phoenix_ would cost them their stellar reputation, but this... He'll have his work cut out rebuilding after this, and there'll be more than a few clients out for blood over the lost merchandise.

He continues out of the cargo hold into the ship proper, finds the bridge in a similar state of destruction. Everything that could have been sold off in their bunks is gone as well. 

He should have known better than to leave his dear ship on a planet like Polis with a hole in it that anyone could get through. This is what he gets. Bellamy laughs once, a huffy, strangled laugh, and then he sits down in the middle of the bridge and puts his head in his hands.

This is where the others find him, filing in several moments later, making outraged sounds and kicking lamely at whatever remains strewn on the floor. Monty all but wails when he sees the ruined dashboard (now divested of expensive circuit boards and anything that could be pried off for scrap parts.)

      "Behold," Bellamy mutters angrily. "The glorious Argonautica."

A hand rests on his shoulder, light and undemanding, but offering support if he needs it. He shrugs it off halfheartedly, looks away as Clarke sits down next to him.

      "How did you name her the Argonautica?" she asks quietly. Bellamy cracks a smile, thinking of his crew's early days.

      "I didn't. I wanted to name her the Argo. But Octavia insisted it wasn't a long enough name, so she chose the Argonautica. And even when I insisted that was the name of the tale and not the ship, she wouldn't listen."

      "Stubborn girl. Takes after you," Clarke says, but there's a gentler tone to the jibe than he would have expected. She leans away as Miller crouches in front of Bellamy, the perpetual frown on his face somehow even more evident.

      "Bad news, boss," he says. "I don't think the scrap vultures left us enough of a ship to repair."

      "I know," Bellamy says heavily, shoulders slumped.

There is a moment of silence, Clarke fidgeting like she wants to speak, and then she does.

      "You know," she begins. "I've got a ship and no crew. Looks to me like you have a crew and no ship."

      "Thanks for the offer, Griffin," Bellamy mutters, "But I don't think you dabble in our line of work, and I hear it's bad luck to hijack the same ship twice."

      "Your line of work?" Clarke says with a laugh. "Try me, Blake."

Bellamy gives her an appraising look, working hard not to give any outward sign of his consideration.

      "And which one of us would command this theoretical alliance of yours?" he asks. "A ship with two Commanders is unheard of."

      "We worked together pretty well back in TonDC," Clarke shoots back.

      "Boss?" Miller asks. Bellamy looks back at him, and then at the rest of the crew gathered around them, all gravitating towards the only stability remaining to them. Their faces are drawn, uncertain, hopeful. He can't make this decision without them. He's their Commander, so he gets final say, but - they're his family. They do this together, or not at all.

      "What do you think?" Bellamy asks, his gaze sweeping over each member of his makeshift family in turn. "Time for bigger horizons?"

      "I'm in," Harper says first, stepping forward and thrusting her hand towards the center of the circle, palm down. She's always been brave like that.

      "Me too," Monty says, still regaling his ruined system with sadness. Harper nudges his shoulder, and he blinks at her in confusion before realizing what she wants and sticking his own hand out.

Jasper and Maya do their own weird silent communication thing, all grimaces and dark eyes deliberately blinking, before nodding and reaching out together.

      "I'm in if you are, boss," Miller says, leaning back on his heels and frowning at the ruined bridge.

There's just one more person whose approval Bellamy needs. He twists around to find Octavia skimming her hands over the edge of the door to the bridge, movement stilling near the level where her eyeline was all those years ago when Bellamy stole her away from the ARK and gave her a home she could wander freely. Bellamy knows she's looking at the words they scratched into the paint together with his pocket knife.

He knows because he stopped to look at them too, all those sleepless nights he spent planning how to break her out of the Skybox.

      "O?" he asks. "What's the verdict?"

She lets her hands drop, then tosses her hair over her shoulder and gives him the same look she gives when he asks if they should go for a risky job.

      "It's high time we got off this rustbucket of a spaceship," she says, and her tone is far too casual to be authentic but he knows her decision is made, no matter how difficult it may be for them to leave behind the ship that was the first place they could ever really call home.

      "All right," Bellamy says lowly, looking back to the rest of his crew, all of them now sporting nervous but excited smiles - with the exception of Miller, who looks only mildly pensive.

      "Any one else losing feeling in their hand?" Harper asks. There are several sheepish responses. "With all due respect, Commander, I think we should hurry up and do our handshake. My fingers are tingling."

      "All right, all right," he says with a rumbling laugh, clambering to his feet and offering Clarke a hand up, his heart feeling lighter than it has since the _Phoenix_ settled into orbit around Polis. "Everyone in?"

Their fingers brush, all together in the center of a lopsided oval, and on Harper's count they pump down once, twice, then throw their hands up.

      "If the scrap vultures hadn't looted the still too, I'd totally bust you all out some moonshine," Jasper promises apologetically. "It would really complete the moment, I think."

      "Jasper," Octavia says exasperatedly.

      "Yes?"

      "I am going to cry if you keep reminding me that our ship is basically toast, and if you make me cry, I am going to introduce my fist to your face."

      "Noted," Jasper mutters, quickly disappearing from the bridge. The others disperse to salvage what they can from their bunks, leaving Bellamy and Clarke to look out the _Argonautica's_ dusty windshield, where the _Phoenix_ stands somewhere in the red-brown haze of sand, a lone sentinel against Polis' harsh climate.

      "Ready?" Clarke asks.

      "I should be asking you that," Bellamy muses. "Wait till you see the kind of jobs we take on."

      "I just might surprise you, Blake," Clarke responds. "Maybe I want to mix it up a little. I can totally do illegal."

      "First rule of criminal life, Clarke," Octavia says, poking her head into the bridge. "No maybes. You're on one side of the law or the other. Pick one and stick to it. And let me tell you, the illegal one is _way_ more exciting."

Bellamy chuckles and strides forward to muss her hair. She yelps and slaps his wrist away, ducking back through the door. He hears her footsteps patter down the hall and turns his head away to hide another smile.

The smile fades as his hand reaches out and skims the edges of scratched paint by the door.

 

_WHAT DO WE SAY TO FEAR?_

 

      "Not today," he mutters, and then he is following the others out, walking towards a new future. He does not look back, afterwards, and the _Argonautica_ is swallowed by wind and sand as the _Phoenix_ takes off.

It is the bittersweet end of one chapter of their life, and only the beginning of the next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus concludes our first arc: 'enemies'. 'Friends' is entirely written up but still needs editing - it's got all the essential plot-moving bits, but I want to go back and add more quiet moments, character interaction, just silly 'we're confined to a spaceship and we need to let loose' shenanigans, etc. And then I have to tackle 'lovers'. Which is hard. I'm atrocious at romance.
> 
> My last difficult exam is April 12th, you can expect a lot of writing happening after that. Until that, however, I need to hunker down and do some more studying. I'm sorry for the slow updates - real life and academics take a lot out of me. :(  
> You guys have been super lovely and supportive and you've made my day more than once. Thank you. In the meantime, I'm on tumblr, you're probably on tumblr, we can be on tumblr _together._


	9. Respite Part I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> PREVIOUSLY: 
> 
> The crew of the Argonautica found their spaceship picked clean by scrap vultures on Polis. Clarke and her crew offered them a place on the Phoenix, joining their two families together. They accepted with the promise that Clarke and Bellamy would be co-leaders. Now, three months later, they're just starting to get the hang of working as space pirates when Raven gets some game-changing news...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: gambling.
> 
> Hi readers! I know this update has been a long time coming, but I genuinely believe that all the editing I've done has made this a much better story than it was initially, so I hope you guys think the wait pays off. This chapter starts off the 2nd big plot arc: friends!

##  _Three months later:_

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route to SPACEPORT TWENTY-TWO coined FARRAGUT, Sector D06-T13. Allegiance: Blake/Griffin.**

 

 

" - Monty, you can do better than that - "

" - If you don't pass the ball I swear I'm going to squeeze toothpaste all over your pillow - "

" - Someone guard Octavia - "

" - C'mon Harper, Clarke's open!"

Wells' desperate dash towards the ball across the mess hall abruptly comes to an end as he trips over Jasper's flailing limbs. He manages to land on his palms and forearms, softening the impact, but even so he's still wincing as he sits up to assess Jasper's damage. 

"Shit, sorry man," Jasper says, grinning bashfully with one hand pressed to his temple.

Clarke swoops down on them like a vulture, hands on her hips, sweat glistening on her bare skin. 

"Foul! No tripping allowed, Jasper," she frowns, a little bit breathless since they've all been running around for the better part of an hour. Privately, Wells thinks her team has an advantage, not having to wear shirts, but he got first pick of the roster, so Clarke got to pick skins. "Wells, you good?"

"I've gotten rougher tackles from you," he jokes as she reaches a hand to haul him up. 

"Yeah," Clarke grunts, "But we were young and small. You didn't have as far to fall." Louder, to everyone else, she shouts: "Free kick to team shirts!"

Wells knocks his shoulder against hers playfully and dutifully walks to the soccer ball that Harper's placed in front of the goal for him. Raven stands between him and a tiebreaker score. In the absence of a real field, they've shoved the tables against the mess hall's walls and the "goalposts" are just piles of the discarded shirts belonging to Clarke's team. 

He has mixed feelings about Raven playing on the skins team. 

On one hand, he gets a forbidden thrill out of seeing her wearing just a sports bra, her bare skin flushed with exertion and shining under the overhead lights, his mouth going dry at the sight of her toned stomach. He'll never admit it out loud, but it's been getting harder and harder to _not_ notice Raven. 

Which brings him to the other hand: she's making it really difficult for him to keep his attention discrete. 

The fact that he's supposed to score on her now is even more distracting. 

"Give me everything you've got, Jaha," Raven goads, setting her feet apart in a determined stance and staring him in the eye. When she looks at him like that, it's far too easy to forget that they're not alone in the world, that most of the crew is watching and waiting for the kick. 

"You sure you're ready?" Wells asks, hoping he sounds more confident than he feels. 

"We get it, you're real cute, but quit flirting and get on with it," Harper calls from the sidelines. Wells is abruptly glad that no amount of blushing will show on his brown cheeks. He looks down at the soccer ball at his feet, no longer able to meet Raven's steady gaze, and exhales deeply. 

 _Just like we've always played_ , he tells himself. He and Clarke were kicking soccer balls up and down the ARK's sterile corridors as soon as they were old enough to walk. This is no big deal. He's not going to mess up just because Raven is standing in his way, shirtless and brilliant and looking like she wants to eat him. 

He takes a running start, and kicks hard to Raven's left. She dives to block the shot but narrowly misses, her fingers barely brushing the ball as it passes her and recoils off the back of the mess hall. 

"GOAL FOR SHIRTS!" Octavia screams behind Wells, giving him approximately zero warning before she leaps onto his back. He hooks his arms under her knees and hitches her higher up his back as she pumps one fist in the air in celebration. "TAKE THAT, SKINS! BOW DOWN TO SHIRTS! BOW DOWN TO OUR VERY HANDSOME AND INCREDIBLY TALENTED MVP WELLS JAHA - "

"That's a little much, don't you think?" Wells jokes as he spins her around in celebration. Her weight throws him off, nearly makes him stumble, but Lincoln's there to steady them, and then everyone's crowding in for high-fives and hugs - teammates and rivals alike. 

Then, Miller's voice on the public comms makes them all straighten up and listen. 

"This is your pilot speaking," he says dryly. "If you're all done playing soccer without me, I'd get ready for landing. We're docking at Farragut in roughly twenty minutes, and Nygel won't want to do business with us if you're sweaty."

"Thanks for the heads up, Miller," Clarke answers, already snapping back into Commander mode. "Everyone who's going with Blake today gets to shower first - the rest of us stay behind and move the tables back in place. Good game, everyone!"

There are murmurs of agreement as everyone disperses to their assigned duties. Wells hangs back to help Jasper and Clarke shove the tables back into the center of the room. He's absolutely not watching Raven towel herself off with her shirt. He's a professional. 

She saunters over to him as they're done, her shirt now slung around her neck and doing very little to hide the smooth skin under her collarbone. As usual, Wells doesn't know whether to be thankful for the sight. 

"If we'd had more time, skins would have tied the game," she says, sounding just a little disgruntled. "But that was a really good kick. I'm impressed."

"Everyone always forgets I've been playing as long as Clarke," Wells snorts. "Just because she's louder when it comes to yelling out the rules..."

"It's why we love her," Raven answers dryly. Wells scratches at the back of his head, and decides to take a risk.

"Do you remember that place on Farragut that had really good tofu skewers last time we visited?"

"That was a few weeks ago," Raven says. "They might have been shut down since. They definitely weren't an approved business."

"Want to go and check?" Wells asks. His spirits fall when Raven makes a face in response. 

"Sorry, not sure I'll have time," she muses. "I'm gonna go track down some scrap vultures and see if I can get a new air drill - Wick broke my last one. Negotiations will take a while, the prices in this stretch of space are _killer_."

"Oh," Wells says. hoping he doesn't sound as disappointed as he feels. "Yeah, of course. That makes sense."

"Wells, you busy?" Miller asks, the comms buzzing in Wells' ear. 

"No, what can I do for you?"

"Come up to the bridge," Miller says. "I need a co-pilot for docking and Harper's gone to take a shower."

"On my way," Wells says to him, and then to Raven, he says, "I guess I'll see you when you get back."

"Don't stay up too late," Raven answers dryly. She claps him on the back as she leaves, hard enough to knock some breath out of him, and he stands in the middle of the mess hall for another moment afterwards, winded by their conversation, until Miller pings him again and demands to know where he is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **SPACEPORT TWENTY-TWO coined FARRAGUT, Sector D06-T13. Allegiance: NONE.**

 

Lincoln thinks the greatest height of irony is that when Bellamy is distracted enough to momentarily forget that he's caught Lincoln with Octavia in various states of undress on multiple occasions, they actually work together extraordinarily well

"I won't pay any more than five rations per crate," Nygel insists. Bellamy makes a sound of displeasure deep in his throat.

"We went to a lot of trouble to get these past security, Nygel. We deserve at least ten rations for each."

The dark glare that was usually sent Lincoln's way the first part of the three months they've spent on the _Phoenix_ is now being used to intimidate the toughest black market dealer this side of the Potomac. On Bellamy's other side, Monroe, Harper and Dax stand, all looking suitably dangerous. Lincoln isn't even trying particularly hard; Octavia's told him to just shadow Bellamy and stare at whoever he's talking to and crack his neck every once in a while.

She's assured him it works wonders.

Not taking his eyes off of Nygel, Lincoln slowly tilts his head and feels the familiar stretch in his neck. Another moment of increasing pressure, and then it cracks audibly, leaving him feeling much more refreshed.

Nygel's eyes flicker to him, and he sees her swallow.

"Fine. Seven rations a crate."

"Eight."

"Eight it is, you miserable swindler," Nygel agrees bitterly, crossing her arms and spitting at Bellamy's feet. She narrowly misses the tips of their boots. Lincoln raises one eyebrow slowly, deliberately, but Blake has already decided to ignore the slight.

"Takes one to know one," his Commander quips cheerfully, and he makes a quick, jerky signal with his hand for the others to relax. The others sling their guns back over their shoulders, but Lincoln waits another moment because Nygel looks absolutely mutinous as Bellamy shoves the first crate forward and then strides past her to the mountain of ration packs piled in the back room.

Lincoln doesn't like the way she's eyeing her guards at the front of the room, and the hairs on the back of his neck stand on edge as another tense moment passes. Three months ago, he might have thought Bellamy stupid to not notice Nygel carefully considering betrayal, but now he sees the other man ready on his feet, the quick glances out of the corner of his eye. He's not as oblivious as he seems. He simply wants to finish the transaction before Nygel makes up her mind that killing them after they've brought her the goods is a better business practice.

"That's all of it, Commander," Harper says, cheerfully slapping the side of the crate she's just stacked on her cart. "Time to go, it's Maya and Wells' turn to cook and they always make a mean stew."

She stops to wink at Nygel as they pass, and Bellamy starts coughing loudly into the crook of his elbow to disguise his laughter. Even Lincoln cracks a smile, turning his face away so the disgruntled dealer doesn't see him.

"All right there, Commander?" Monroe asks innocently, shooting the two of them a sideways look.

"You sound like you're hacking up your lungs," Harper mutters, and Monroe discretely slides her palm forward for a high five.

"That's the idea," Bellamy says dryly. He turns towards Lincoln then, eyes him from head to toes. "She liked you."

"Do you think so?" Lincoln responds mildly.

"Oh yeah," Bellamy says as they emerge into a better lit corridor of the spaceport. They take a backwards look almost simultaneously - Nygel's thugs are watching them from a distance, but it looks like they're going to get away this time. "I don't think she's ever gone higher than seven rations a crate for anything."

"She went nine for half a litre of morphine, once," Harper reminds him. "But that was once in a blue moon."

"Stingy old bat," Bellamy says with a shake of his head. "Only reason we go to her is because she'll buy anything, no questions asked."

"Next time, glare some more and maybe she'll fall over dead," Harper urges him, and Lincoln snorts loudly at that.

They walk in silence for another few minutes, weaving among traffic. Ahead of them Dax slips off for his own business as soon as they're clear of Nygel's territory and he's sure the girls can handle the cargo. Bellamy looks like he wants to scold him for it, then seems to decide it's not worth the trouble. Lincoln considers the relaxed slope of his shoulders, figures the high of a deal gone right is as good a time as any to ask what's been on his mind.

Or rather, what's been on Octavia's mind, and therefore has been ranted to him loudly on multiple occasions in the confines of the bunk they share. Lincoln thinks that if he doesn't ask soon, she'll wear a hole through their floor straight to the cargo hold below with all her angry pacing.

"I'm going to assume you've heard about Octavia's Unity Day idea," Lincoln begins carefully, slowing his pace so Monroe and Harper walk a few steps up ahead, talking animatedly, their shoulders brushing as Monroe leans closer for a quiet remark. They've been spending a great deal of time together, but it's not his place to interfere.

"Octavia gets a lot of ideas," Bellamy says, and perhaps he wasn't happy enough about the deal because his face has already gone stony. "Doesn't mean they're any good."

"What part of it are you so opposed to?" Lincoln asks.

"Unity Day," Bellamy spits, rolling the words around his mouth like they're physically painful to say. "All of it. In general."

Lincoln exhales deeply through his nose and nods.

"I'll tell her I tried," he says.

"You do that," Bellamy responds. Lincoln hangs back as he passes, watches the other crew members vanish into a steady stream of people walking along the spaceport's corridors. When he can no longer see Harper's bright bandanna or Bellamy's wild tangle of hair, Lincoln turns his back and shoulders his way through the crowds. They part easily for his bulk, and he takes a moment to appreciate the eyes that see the GROUNDER tattoos peeking out of his collar and inching up the back of his head and slide past, deliberately ignoring him.

GROUNDER brands some of its exiles, striking the tattoos through with searing hot knives to make it clear the exiled member no longer gains any benefit from the ink's intimidating messages. The only reason Lincoln escaped with his designs intact, he thinks wryly, is because they left him for dead, shivering and begging for his next fix. 

It wasn't mercy. It was incompetence.

Farragut's red light sector brings back some of the same memories of that time in his life - the darkened portions of hall where the overhead lights have been punched out and left to dangle from their sockets, the smell of sweat and piss, the holes-in-walls speakeasies.

Lincoln strides to a speakeasy hidden away between two metal panels that have been torn up from their original places and propped up to shield the door. The bouncer takes his time dragging his gaze up from Lincoln's toes to his head, then gives him a lascivious wink as he steps aside. Lincoln is not entirely sure if that means the bouncer wants to barter sex, or moonshine, or something stronger, but decides not to dwell on it.

He spots Octavia almost immediately, at the back of the bar, poker cards held in front of her chest like throwing knives. Of the other opponents seated at her table, most have already folded and are leaned back on their chairs, mournfully counting their losses. Only two remain - the first looks similarly dejected and the second is arguing loudly, gesturing between Octavia and the dealer.

Lincoln's eyes meet hers through the haze of smoke that hangs in the speakeasy, and she blinks bright blue eyes at him, slow and lazy. He takes this to mean he shouldn't intervene - at least, not yet, and takes a seat at the bar.

"What do you want?" the bartender says, smacking her gums and giving him an unimpressed look as she wipes a dirty rag around the rim of a chipped mug.

"Water," Lincoln says.

"Water?" the bartender asks, looking at him incredulously. She glances down the length of the bar, where another employee is rummaging through some shelves. "Hey Pascal, do we even sell water?"

"We'll sell anything as long as there's a buyer," the man responds, not bothering to look up.

"Hmm," the bartender says, setting the mug down and reaching for the sink. "Fine. Five cred a glass."

It's lukewarm and tastes slightly of whatever moonshine was in the cup previously, but Lincoln hands over the payment and drinks gladly. The bartender resumes her blank-faced stare, eyes ghosting over the tattoos.

"Trigedakru?" she asks.

"Yes," Lincoln says. It's not really a lie, the same way what she asked wasn't really a question. But it seems to be the right answer, because the bartender gives him a pleased nod, and refills his glass without him asking.

"A good crew. Farragut's done well under their protection."

If the run-down, smoky bar is her idea of 'doing well', Lincoln doesn't want to ask what her idea of bad is, so he merely raises his glass in silent acknowledgement and drinks. There is more yelling from the back; the bartender purses her lips together and rubs harder at her mug. Lincoln glances over his shoulder to find Octavia gone and her opponents about to throw fists at each other.

The curtain over the back entrance is swaying ever so slightly. He sets his glass down and ducks through it, avoiding the poker match that has dissolved into a brawl. It opens up into a maintenance corridor, dark and humid. Lincoln breathes through his mouth as his eyes adjust, trying not to grimace at the smell of vomit.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spots a sweep of movement.

He turns, catches Octavia's wrist just about she's about to bury a knife into his shoulder - not the one that's just recently healed from their jailbreak. She grins at him then, all pearly white teeth, and he wants to kiss her, wants those teeth hard against his mouth, wants to taste iron.

"What are you going to do when I get good enough to actually stab you?" she asks, pulling her wrist away and sheathing the knife as he gives a small smile of his own and sets his hand on her waist.

"Beg for mercy," he says honestly, pulling her in close. "How was the game?"

"Piece of cake," Octavia says, patting her pocket with a self-satisfied roll of her eyes. They're not lined with heavy makeup today, they never are when she's going in for a card game. She keeps her face naked and her clothes mismatched on game days, making herself look younger, more vulnerable, until the moment she goes in for the kill and relieves her grizzled opponents of all their betting money and then some. "Sweeped in an easy two hundred cred, plus a pocketwatch I think I can pawn off for another fifty."

"Maybe not to Nygel," Lincoln says. "We angered her."

"Bellamy's single greatest talent, pushing people's buttons," Octavia says. She links arms with him and drags him along the maintenance tunnel. "Speaking of, has he changed his mind about Unity Day, or does he plan on pushing mine too?"

"He remains opposed," Lincoln admits as he pushes open the hatch into the main corridor. They receive one or two looks as they clamber out of it, but no one lingers too long. It's not uncommon to see young couples getting creative with their makeout spots, and that's likely what the spectators suspect.

"Damn Blake genes," Octavia mutters. Lincoln's inclined to agree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **SPACEPORT TWENTY-TWO coined FARRAGUT, Sector D06-T13. Allegiance: NONE.**

 

Clarke is on the bridge, drying her hair with a towel, when the others arrive with the loot from Nygel. She spares Bellamy a cursory look as he drops onto the bench next to her and slams his head against the table she's currently perched upon. Then she then turns back to the travel log she's been skimming, chewing on her lip as she considers their next course of action. Bellamy will talk when he's ready.

It turns out she doesn't have to wait long.

"Octavia won't stop insisting on her Unity Day party," her co-leader complains, picking his head up off the table and glaring at Clarke like it is her fault his sister is so stubborn.

"I still don't understand what you have against it," Clarke responds mildly, still half focused on the readouts of the _Phoenix's_ fuel consumption per parsec. There are too many numbers and her head is starting to spin - she really should be getting Raven or Monty to explain everything to her, but she doesn't want to look like she's paying complete attention to Bellamy, because she knows it'll get him riled up and she's still grumpy he used up all the hot water this morning.

"It's _Unity Day_ ," Bellamy says, as though that explains everything. She finally puts down the travel log and raises a blonde eyebrow at him. "Unity Day represents everything I stand against. It's ARK propaganda and rehearsed and-"

"It's exactly what Octavia never had as a kid," Clarke interrupts. "Look, all we have to do is have a party and _call_ it Unity Day, it doesn't have to actually have anything to do with the ARK traditions. We've just pulled off some great jobs-"

"Griffin, a _kitten_ could have pulled off those jobs, you've barely dipped your toes into the criminal world-"

"- and we deserve to celebrate not tearing each other's throats out yet," Clarke continues as though he hadn't spoken, eyeing him intently. Bellamy gives her his most surly look and crosses his arms defiantly.

"Give it time," he says. "You keep encouraging her to waste resources-"

"Aren't you the one who said it's important to keep up crew moral?"

"Then play more soccer. _Unity Day_ isn't the way to do it!"

"Oh, pull the stick out of your ass, it doesn't have to have anything to do with actual Unity-"

Raven pops up at Clarke's side so suddenly that when she startles, she nearly falls off the table. Her surprise sends Bellamy into snickers, and Clarke resists hitting him over the head with the travel log in her hands.

"Clarke, I have to talk to you," Raven says insistently, wrapping her long fingers around Clarke's wrist and tugging her off the table.

"Coming," Clarke responds, untucking her legs from underneath her and wincing as the feeling returns to her feet. As she follows Raven off the bridge, she sends Bellamy one last look over her shoulder and calls out, "So Blake, party tonight!"

His responding groan has the ends of Clarke's lips twitching up into a sardonic smile and Raven giving her a strange look as she tugs open the door to her workshop and ushers her friend inside. It's not until Raven locks the door behind them and turns around with a hesitant look on her face that Clarke begins to worry.

"Something wrong?" she demands, immediately pushing back petty things like party plans to the back of her mind.

"Well, technically, something right," Raven responds. Clarke has never seen this kind of nervousness in her old friend before, and it has her on edge. "Wick and I were haggling with scrap vultures for a new air drill because he made mine explode when I specifically told him _not_ to touch it while I was still fiddling with the pressure gauge - anyway, we heard the scrap vultures gossiping. Clarke, the ARK made another public announcement about two weeks back about the Aphelion. They found a dead ship drifting out on the edge of ARK space."

It hits her like a punch to the stomach.

"Oh god," Clarke croaks, gripping the edge of Raven's worktable for balance. Her vision swims as grief threatens to overtake her - the _Aphelion_ , her father's ship for as long as she can remember. Hearing this hurts even more than the first time she heard it had gone missing with him on board - it hurts more because at least she could hope for a happy ending before. "Oh no."

"Clarke," Raven says again, letting go of the door and striding forward to keep Clarke upright. "Clarke, listen to me. The scrap vultures went in to check it out before ARK arrived on the scene. _It wasn't the Aphelion_."

"Then..." Clarke says, furiously blinking back tears. She raises her head to meet Raven's gaze.

"Then the ARK is lying," Raven says firmly. "They picked out some other ship, they're trying to make everyone believe it's the Aphelion. Do you know what this means? It means they have something to hide!"

Clarke pushes Raven back, stumbling when the support of her warms arms vanishes, and collapses onto the rickety stool at the side of the worktable.

"Oh god, Raven," she mumbles, placing her head in her hands. "Why did you..."

"It's the sign we've been waiting for! It means your dad is still out there, we just have to find him!"

"No!" Clarke says suddenly, dropping her hands and smacking her palm against the surface of the table. Raven jumps back, eyes wide, and Clarke just stares at her for a moment, eyes wide with pain, mouth open with the words she's still searching for. "Raven, I told you I was giving up on this."

"Yeah, but that was before we had-"

"No!"

Clarke turns away and presses her lips together in a thin, determined line, the only way she knows for sure she won't start sobbing onto Raven's worktable. She forces herself to breathe evenly until the pressure behind her eyes and in her throat recedes, until she can look back at Raven without the risk of tears rolling down her cheeks.

"I think you're making a mistake," Raven says stubbornly, her hip jutting out and propping up one grease-stained hand.

"So be it," Clarke says. "I'm telling you, as your friend, I don't want to hear my - I don't want to hear the Aphelion mentioned again. Don't make me tell you as your Commander."

"Roger that," Raven says bitterly, spinning around on her heel and stalking to the other side of the workshop, where she pulls out a screwdriver and immediately starts dismantling some mysterious structure with all the ferocity of a sandstorm on Polis.

Clarke's heart sinks at the tension in Raven's shoulders, the angry swish of her ponytail cascading down her back as she whips her head to the side to look for some other tool to attack her prototypes with.

"Raven," she says softly. "I can't - I just can't - "

"I know, Clarke," Raven says curtly, and then her hands still and Clarke sees them rest on the counter at her sides, limp and tired. She sighs heavily.

"I'm sorry," Clarke murmurs one more time, and leaves the workshop. There's a flash of movement at the end of the hall, like someone's just walked past the door, but it's gone too quickly for Clarke's tired eyes to identify.

The door closes behind her loudly, and Clarke jumps. She suddenly realizes her heart is beating in her chest like she's just run a marathon. She takes deep breaths, fights to keep back the tears that have just threatened to surface again. There are footsteps down the hall, the end opposite the one she was just looking at. She turns away from whoever's just arrived, hoping they'll walk past, but instead she feels a soft hand on her shoulder.

"Clarke?" Monty asks, all wide brown eyes and concern. "Are you okay?"

"I'm all right," she says, giving him half a smile that pulls at the muscles of her cheeks. His slanted eyes search hers for a moment, and then he pulls her into a tight hug, the top of his head brushing her nose. "Thanks," she breathes out, feeling some of the tension leave her body.

"Anytime," Monty says, releasing her and giving her his own close-lipped smile. "Now, I'm really sorry to spring this on you when you look like you really don't want to deal with anything, but uh, Jasper and I wanted to make moonshine for the Unity Day party, and we kind of burned a hole through your pot? So we were wondering if there's another one around..."

Clarke swears and massages her temples with one hand.

"First of all, what the hell are you putting in that alcohol? And does Blake know...?"

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **SPACEPORT TWENTY-TWO coined FARRAGUT, Sector D06-T13. Allegiance: NONE.**

 

The cost of cross-galaxy communication has risen.

When he saw the price at the last spaceport the _Phoenix_ docked at, Dax thought that perhaps the local GROUNDER crew had some kind of scam going on. When he sees the price is the same here, he begins to think it is just plain bad luck.

His mother's the one who likes politics and economics - if Dax asked, she'd probably tell him exactly why everything's getting more expensive every time Dax turns around. But he doesn't. They don't see eye to eye these days. He knows she disapproves of what he's doing to earn cred - every time he calls, she reminds him that this is not what she had in mind when she said she wanted him to learn the value of hard work.

 _Sorry mom_ , he says every time. She planned for him to be her right hand, her protege in the art of power, but Dax has never had that subtlety. He prefers being in the thick of things, where the action is.

When he sits himself down in the videobooth and enters enough cred for a call to the ARK, Shumway's face appears on the feed. The older man is just as surly-looking as he was in person - more so now, Dax thinks, since Griffin caught wise to them and dumped him and Cuyler on Mount Weather.

Dax thinks Shumway's jealous that some stupid kid managed to avoid detection where he didn't.

"Hello Dax," Shumway says, his voice only slightly distorted by the call. "What news do you have for us?"

"Reyes knows the ARK's lying about the Aphelion."

Shumway's eyes glint on the screen.

"Well," he says slowly. "Isn't that interesting."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a proud European, it was physically painful to write soccer instead of football in Wells' scene, but in the end I decided this would make it less confusing. I have no idea how to sports, but google says you get a free kick if you're tripped, so...  
> The bartenders are totally intended to be Pascal and Trina, two delinquents who died early on. I'm saving Gina for a possible appearance in arc 3...  
> Interestingly enough, one of my coworkers studies game theory and gave me a detailed explanation of how card counting works. It's difficult to keep track of in your head, but the actual math is quite simple. Octavia could probably do it with whatever Bellamy taught her. But I digress - that's not the approach I'm going for in this fic.  
> Thanks for reading! I am 100% thirsty for feedback - especially for what you guys think Dax is up to.


	10. Respite Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CONTENT WARNINGS: alcohol consumption: everyone's aged up a few years in this fic so by my country's laws it wouldn't be considered underage drinking, but you're free to decide for yourself what you think of it.
> 
> Today's weather: [Kiara](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-kyRh7N-kE) by Bonobo (Black Sands).

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route to UNKNOWN DESTINATIONS. Allegiance: Blake/Griffin.**

 

 

Harper knows Bellamy's finally given in to the idea of a Unity Day party when she walks onto the bridge and he sits defeated at the briefing desk, bent over blueprints and the barebones of smuggling plans, while Octavia flits around him with armfuls of tinsel.

She pauses by Bellamy's chair, not to rub in his defeat, but to thank him for it. As he looks up at her and scowls, Harper's not sure the difference matters much to him.

      "Thanks for this," she says anyway, bending down and wrapping her arms around his neck. He tenses against her for a moment, clearly surprised by the gesture, then awkwardly reaches up to pat her on the back.

      "Better be worth it," he says gruffly as she pulls away. Harper just grins and punches him lightly in the shoulder.

      "It is for us, Commander," she says simply. As she walks away towards Octavia, she can hear him savagely mutter _'Unity Day'_ as he returns to his plans. Octavia smiles dazzlingly at her when she's spotted, and she's still beautiful even with tinsel sticking to her chin with static electricity. "Anything I can do to help?"

      "Absolutely," Octavia says, nodding towards the back of the bridge, where an opened crate is overflowing with tinsel. "Most of this is too knotted to be useful, so it totally wasn't worth the thirty cred the guy tried to make me pay for it, but see what you can untangle and we'll hang that up anyway."

      "Sounds good," Harper says, and sits down cross-legged in front of the box. Octavia's right - most of the tinsel is beyond salvageable, and tiny sparkly bits break off when she tackles the worst of the knots, but it is oddly calming work untangling the long strings. Octavia returns every few minutes to take away whatever she's managed to straighten out, but she doesn't work nearly fast enough to match the other girl's speed until Monroe arrives.

She doesn't say much, never really does, but her eyes meet Harper's and she shrugs casually before sitting down on the box's opposite side to help out. Harper just looks down at the pile of tinsel still in her lap and tries not to smile, but it's hard. She finds she really likes the sight of calm, serious Monroe with her arms full of tinsel.

Too soon, Harper reaches into the box for the next bit of tinsel and her hand scrapes bare wood. She and Monroe lean forward to look inside at the same time, and knock foreheads together. Octavia chooses that moment to return, as they're rubbing their heads and smiling bashfully at each other.

      "I guess that's all of it," she says, surveying the bridge with her hands on her hips. Harper clambers to her feet to join her, and offers Monroe a hand as well. She takes it, much to Harper's pleasure, though she lets it go as soon as she stands, and Harper feels the absence of her warm fingers with a pang of dismay. "What do you think?"

Octavia's done a terrible job of hanging tinsel evenly around the bridge, but something about the visible patches of duct tape (pilfered from Raven's workshop) and the occasional giant knot sagging in the middle of a dip really does it for Harper.

      "Beautiful," she says, just as some of the tinsel frees itself from the confines of duct tape, and one of the aforementioned giant knots falls on Bellamy's head. Octavia makes a strangled sound in her throat, which might be a laugh, but might also be distress that Bellamy will redact his approval for the party.

      "I think it's too festive for our brave Commander," Monroe says evenly as Bellamy gets to his feet and starts yelling.

      "Definitely," Harper says. "Think we better escape before we get caught in the crossfire?"

Monroe approves, so they both scamper out the door before Octavia recruits them to yell back at Bellamy with her. They wander aimlessly through the ship for a while, Harper wondering how best to take Monroe's hand again, and eventually arrive in the mess hall.

Wick and Jasper are currently bent over a curious looking contraption and a wide assortment of chemicals. Maya's watching them from a safe distance, a poetry volume sitting abandoned in her lap in favour of the more exciting disaster about to happen. Her doubtful expression makes Harper take a large step away from the boys and their experiment. Just in case.

      "Don't tell Bellamy or Clarke," Jasper says when he sees them, straightening his back and raising his hands in the air pleadingly. Harper takes another step backwards.

      "Or Raven, for that matter," Wick adds thoughtfully, cocking his head and poking at their Frankenstein of a contraption. "We kind of raided her workshop again."

      "We did too," Harper says. "But that was for duct tape, not for... whatever that is."

      "Fireworks," Jasper explains, with a hint of pride. Next to Harper, Monroe takes one hand and slaps it against her forehead.

      "Fireworks," she mutters so only Harper can hear. "In an enclosed metal container floating in space."

      "Not that I don't appreciate the enthusiasm," Harper says, trying to imitate Wells' diplomatic tone. "But don't you think we should celebrate Unity Day a little more... traditionally?"

      "Bellamy hates traditional Unity Day. Promising not to be traditional was the only thing that got his seal of approval," Jasper argues. He points to the kitchen, just off from the mess hall. "But if you really want traditional, Monty's adding a few finishing touches to tonight's moonshine."

Now that, Harper can work with.

      "Alcohol," she says. "Excellent."

      "We're all going to die," Monroe says dramatically. Harper grins at her and links their arms together.

      "Everybody dies eventually," she says. "May as well have fun first."

Monroe puts her hand over Harper's mouth with a grimace, and Harper just pulls away and laughs. Monroe excuses herself then, saying she wants to shower before the party starts. Harper hangs around the mess hall with the others for another while, then figures she better get ready too. She's got a really good feeling about this party, about what might happen at it, and walks to her bunk with a bounce in her step.

She doesn't have a lot of changes of clothes - none of them do - but somehow it still takes her forever to get ready. She wants to look _nice_. She experiments with her bandannas, tying them around her neck as a scarf, around her wrist like a bracelet, even slinging two together into some kind of colourful belt that she grimaces at before quickly undoing. In the end, she just undoes the tiny braids in the side of her hair, teases them out so they curl wavily around her face.

Harper thinks she really does look nice. She makes faces at the dusty mirror in the bathrooms, steals some of Octavia's eyeliner and puts on way too much before regretting and washing off most of it. But once she's done, some of it still remains around her eyes, and it makes them pop, and she just can't stop smiling, and maybe if she thinks she looks nice, Monroe will too.

 _Stay cool, Harper_ , she tells herself, and then goes to the kitchen to help Monty transport the moonshine.

They're throwing the party in the bridge, partially because Lincoln and Octavia converted the _Phoenix's_ spacious rec room into an arms training studio that's no longer very suited to hanging out, partially because this way, whoever's piloting won't feel too left out.

She, Wells, and Miller play three-way rock paper scissors to determine who has to stay sober and make sure they don't crash into a planet, except that they end up being really confused and Wells starts poking her in the ribs with his 'scissors' so Monty intervenes and makes them each pick a number between one and ten. Miller loses, which in Harper's opinion is _great_ because she is so ready to get hammered.

By the time Clarke and Raven arrive, nearly an hour late, she's already helped set up a game of beer pong on the briefing table. Clarke looks deeply exhausted so Harper calls her over, gives her a drink to loosen her up, and demands that they be on a team together.

They play against Dax and Wells first, which is interesting, because Dax's not bad but Wells is _terrible_ , and she laughs at the contrast between him and Clarke, who's downing moonshine between every round even when she doesn't have to. Harper would be worried about her, but she finally seems more relaxed, even smiles when Maya jumps in to stop poor Wells from embarrassing himself further. Maya's more sober than any of them at that point, which is probably why she promptly aces that round and orders Harper and Clarke to drink up with a pleased glint in her eye.

      "I think I need some water or I'll hate myself tomorrow morning," Harper says finally, excusing herself and letting Wick take her place. She slaps him on the back, instructs him to kick ass in her name.

She spots Monroe then, sitting beside Lincoln, both of them observing the chaos with casual detachment. Harper wanders over, takes the seat next to Monroe.

      "Hi," Monroe says.

      "Hi," Harper says. Then, because she has no filter when she's tipsy, she blurts out: "You look great. Like, really great."

Monroe's cheeks go faintly pink, making her freckles even more prominent. Lincoln gets up to leave, and Harper hardly even notices because she's too busy staring at Monroe's still-damp hair. She thinks this might be the first time she's ever seen it out of the usual three braids along the curve of her head, and it's longer than she thought it would be, hanging loosely to Monroe's shoulders.

Harper likes her braids because they make her look fierce, but she likes this too. Monroe looks softer like this. Less... distant, and strong, and unattainable.

      "Looks like someone's had enough to drink," Monroe teases, leaning over and bumping shoulders with her. They don't really touch a lot, usually just high fives when one of them makes a sarcastic comment, so it makes Harper's entire arm tingle. She wants to do it again.

      "Nah," Harper says. "I'm just tipsy. I don't have to be drunk to find you attractive. I can drink sooo much more than this, you'll see. Just give me a few minutes to stop the world from spinning."

Monroe looks away at that, takes a sip of her drink and goes quiet so Harper's not entirely sure what's going through her head. She's tired though, so she rests her head on the back of the bench and just watches the festivities for a while. Octavia will probably be pleased. It's nothing on the scale of the parties back on the ARK, but she likes it anyway - likes the thrumming music on the speakers Monty set up, likes seeing her friends and crew laughing together, likes the pretty girl sitting next to her.

Eventually she gets bored and decides she wants to join in the card game Raven's starting, but when she stands the world abruptly goes sideways.

      "Okay, you've had way too much to drink," Monroe says, catching her before she hits the floor and propping her up. "I'm taking you to bed."

      "Yes please," Harper says.

The sounds of music fade away slightly as they leave the bridge, heading for the dormitories. Harper leans heavily on Monroe as they struggle to open the door, because if she moves her head too fast everything has light trails, and it's making her a little nauseous.

      "I love parties," Harper says as Monroe unceremoniously dumps her onto the cot. "So much fun. I love them so much."

      "Yes, I can see that," Monroe responds, untangling Harper's arms from around her neck and bending over to pull her shoes off.

      "Woah, you're undressing me," she notices. Monroe stills.

      "Do you want me not to?" the other girl asks uncertainly, peering over at her. "I just thought it might be uncomfortable to go to sleep in shoes. I can stop if you want."

      "Please continue," Harper says eagerly, and is kind of disappointed when Monroe stops at her socks.

      "I'll be right back, just getting you some water," she says, and then she is gone, leaving only the faint smell of regulation shampoo in her wake. Harper struggles to sit up, because she'll be damned if she falls asleep before Monroe gets back. The night is young. She might still get laid. That would be awesome.

Monroe returns after a moment, slipping into the room lithely, her silhouette backlit by the light from the corridor. Harper takes a long drink from the glass she presses into her hand, if only to give herself enough time to muster up some courage. She takes a deep breath as Monroe takes the glass back and sets it on the bedside table.

      "Hey Monroe."

      "Yeah?"

And then Harper kisses her. Her lips are soft, and warm, and open in surprise. Harper's in heaven for approximately 30 seconds, and then Monroe pulls away like she's been electrified and shoves Harper backwards - not violently, but with a strength that means an unmistakable  _no._

Harper stares dazedly as Monroe backs away and wipes her mouth on her sleeve. It's hard to see in the darkness, but by the dim light, her face looks devastated. Her pounding head takes a moment to realize what's happened, and the ache in her chest makes it difficult to get the words out.

      "I'm sorry," Harper stutters. The happy buzz from the alcohol has faded, leaving her only with a confused fog in her head. "The last few weeks we - I just - I like you a lot and - I just thought you-"

      "Harper, no, that's not - I mean - _fuck_." Monroe says, sounding close to tears, and then she runs out of the dormitory, leaving Harper alone with a half-empty glass of water and her pounding headache. She rests her head on her knees, groans loudly, and promptly cries herself to sleep.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route to UNKNOWN DESTINATIONS. Allegiance: Blake/Griffin.**

 

 

Wells has never much been one for parties. 

It's not that he hates them, per se. He often enjoys them - but distantly, as an observer looking in from the outside. On the ARK it was always Clarke who found out where there'd be dancing and drinking, and he followed in her footsteps to keep an eye on her more so than for his own amusement. His father's position always left him feeling a little bit alienated from everyone else - no one wanted to get too rowdy around the Chancellor's son, in case he reported them. Smiles would cool in his direction. Clarke faced similar cold shoulders, but she always had a way of slipping around them with a determination that left Wells' head spinning.

It's a different experience to attend a party where everyone actually likes him - well, almost. Bellamy's certainly softened since they proved his expectations wrong, and Dax doesn't like anyone on the crew, so that's close enough. 

He rather likes it.

He does his best to hold his own in a few games of beer pong and joins in with some truly off-key karaoke, but the pumping music gives him a headache soon enough, and he decides it's time to go to bed. 

Disappointed and sympathetic shouts in varying degrees of coherency follow his goodbye, but only Raven comes up and affectionately throws one arm around his neck. 

      "Good night, party pooper," she croons drunkenly, and presses a wet kiss to his cheek that quite literally makes his heart skip a beat. She slips away before he can react, striding back to the thick of the festivities. He stands at the exit for a moment, stunned, before fleeing the bridge. 

In the safety of his cabin he takes out the journal hidden in the loose air vent, and he starts to write with one trembling hand.

_Dear ~~father~~ , ~~Councillor~~ , Thelonius._

_You never spoke about my mother._

_What was she like? Did she make your palms sweaty? Did she ever blow your mind with how quick and clever she was? Did you feel like you could take on the universe whenever you made her laugh? Did you drink the leftover coffee she made you even if it was terrible and cold?_

~~_Did she ever kiss you and walk away?_ ~~

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route to UNKNOWN DESTINATIONS. Allegiance: Blake/Griffin.**

 

 

Bellamy decides to keep Miller company up by the controls, feet propped up on the dashboard, a chipped mug of moonshine in his hands. As entertaining as it is to get horribly intoxicated, it's more fun to watch everyone else get horribly intoxicated, so he doesn't drink much. It's a quiet night in space - no reaper or GROUNDER ships, no asteroid fragments to dodge. Bellamy's thankful for that, watching the rest of the crew's antics.

He and Miller don't need to talk much to enjoy each other's company, so mostly they just sit together as Bellamy nurses his moonshine and Miller occasionally checks the radar. Every few minutes Monty comes up to them and drunkenly gives Miller a piece of tinsel as a present, along with a sloppy kiss to his cheek. (Octavia's decorations apparently were not strong enough to survive Jasper and Maya's attempt at a waltz.) If Miller's skin were any lighter, Bellamy is sure his face would get redder in direct proportion to the increasing pile of tinsel next to him.

      "Don't you dare say anything," Miller threatens after Monty starts putting the tinsel in his hair instead of his hands.

      "Wouldn't dream of it," Bellamy promises his closest friend, swallowing his chuckle and taking another swig of moonshine to occupy himself.

He'll never admit it, but he's surprised how fond he's grown of the _Phoenix's_ original crew, how well they've all merged into one. He misses the _Argonautica_ less and less these days, now that they've finally begun to rebuild their reputation as a dependable smuggler crew. These kids, they're good. He likes them.

It must be the alcohol making him emotional.

      "Hey, jackass."

Bellamy blinks at the voice that suddenly rings in his ear, and looks around for its source. He then realizes it's his comm, and turns the volume up.

      "Yes, Raven?" he asks, scanning the bridge for her. He finds her lying on the bench in the back, her head in Octavia's lap. "You're six meters away, couldn't you get up and talk to me?"

      "Nah," Raven says. He can see her smirking from here. Octavia raises an eyebrow when she sees him looking, and resumes petting Raven's hair. "Too far, my head hurts."

      "Your fault for being a lightweight," Bellamy responds. "What do you want?"

      "I could just want to talk to you," Raven says. "Your company isn't the worst I've had to put up with. Don't wanna hang out tonight, though. Tonight I need you to find Clarke."

      "Clarke?"

Bellamy looks around the bridge and realizes her bright blonde hair is nowhere to be seen. He's rather surprised to find that's she disappeared, because last time he saw her she was the head of a conga line around the briefing table, and before that she was annihilating her opponents at beer pong, and he's usually very aware of her presence.

      "Yeah, Clarke. Blonde, blue eyes, really nice boobs, about this tall," Raven wheezes, raising one of her arms and reaching for the ceiling. Her fingers are only about a meter and a half off of the floor, and Bellamy's decently sure Clarke's taller than that, but he appreciates that Raven's attempt all the same. "You should know her, you stare at her a lot."

      "Do not," Bellamy says automatically, and next to him, Miller raises his eyebrows. He's suddenly very glad Raven's just sober enough to use a private channel for their conversation instead of the public comms.

      "Do too," Raven says. He hears her groan as Octavia carefully eases her head off her lap and stands up to get another drink. Raven pouts across the bridge at him as she adjusts her arm so she can use it as a pillow. "Anyway. You can probably still walk in a straight line, and you're not currently busy piloting my gorgeous hunk of metal through space, so go find her. Please?"

With a long-suffering sigh, Bellamy downs what remains of his moonshine, flicks the piece of tinsel that's dangling off Miller's head and into his face, and leaves the bridge. Clarke doesn't respond on her comms, so he figures he'll just have to search for her manually.

He goes first to the bathroom to make sure she's not puking her guts out, and runs into Monroe getting a glass of water.

      "Griffin's not in there?" he asks.

      "Don't think so, the light was off when I went in," Monroe says, and then walks off for the dormitories. Bellamy sighs and heads for the medbay because he knows she goes there when she's stressed and obsessively rearranges her medical supplies, but there's no one there either. He's tempted to filch an ibuprofen from her stores, then reminds himself that their meager stores need to be saved for things more major than a hangover.

In the end, Bellamy finds her in her bunk, which seems really obvious in hindsight. The door is ajar, but he knocks anyway before pushing it open wider. Clarke is standing with her back to him, just standing perfectly still in the center of her bunk. In front of her, on a part of the wall that's usually covered by an anatomy poster he now spots lying on the floor, is the portrait of a man whose features echo Clarke's.

Bellamy wonders if he's welcome here as he silently steps through the door.

      "Griffin?" he asks quietly, stepping around so he stands in front of her. She blinks suddenly and refocuses her eyes, like she's just noticed his presence, and sways slightly.

      "Hi Bellamy," she says softly, and it's really weird hearing her say his first name, because they moved past the stage of calling each other 'princess' and 'asshole' after the reaper attack, but they still tend to use each other's surnames in snarky tones.

      "Raven said you might not be all right," Bellamy says slowly, uncomfortable with the whole situation. Just then, a single tear rolls down her cheek.

      "Raven's so smart," Clarke whispers. "She's always been the smartest of us three."

      "You're pretty smart too," Bellamy says, reaching out and hesitantly putting a hand on her shoulder to steady her. She leans into it, tilts her head towards his hand as though to press her cheek against his knuckles. She doesn't reach, but he feels her hair ghost over his skin.

      "Not smart enough," Clarke says sadly. "If I was, I would know what to do."

      "Well then," Bellamy says. "Good thing you have a co-Commander to talk to these things about, right? Let's sit down and you can tell me all about it."

She doesn't move, just stares over his shoulder. Bellamy turns, and looks at the charcoal portrait behind him. The man is smiling, kind-looking, and even in smudged black and white he recognizes pieces of Clarke.

      "That's my dad," Clarke explains. "Jake Griffin, pilot of the Aphelion."

      "...I'm sorry."

Clarke doesn't smile.

      "He would have wanted to go that way, if he had to," she says simply. "He loved that ship. Always said he was going to take it to the ends of space. Maybe he did."

      "I heard the ARK found it," Bellamy says. He looks down at his hands. "I know what it's like, if you want to talk. I never knew my dad, but I was twenty-two when my mother was floated, and it wasn't easy. It gets better, but not immediately."

Clarke shakes her head, finally tears her eyes away from the drawing of her father long enough to look at Bellamy.

      "The ARK was lying. It's not the Aphelion they found. Raven talked to a crew of scrap vultures that stripped it before the ARK got to it. And now she thinks we should look for him again, but I - I told her I couldn't do it anymore-"

      "Hey," Bellamy says urgently as Clarke bursts into tears again and collapses in front of him. He picks her up and sets her down on her cot. She clutches at his wrists as he kneels down at her side. "It's okay. You don't have to search for him if you don't want to. That's the great thing about being a runaway. We do whatever the hell we want."

Clarke is silent for a moment, her fingers loose against the bare skin of his wrists where his sleeves have ridden up. Her eyes, usually so clear and focused, are foggy with alcohol, but she still gazes at him intently, like the answer to her problems is written on his face. Bellamy forces himself not to look away.

      "That's the thing," Clarke says softly. "I kind of do want to search for him."

      "Then we will. It sounds like the kind of thing you'll regret not doing a few years down the road," Bellamy says. "Look, you're drunk, and tired, and you don't have to decide this tonight. We can talk again tomorrow morning."

For a moment, Bellamy thinks Clarke has missed everything he's just said. She's staring intently at his face, and slowly, one of her hands uncurls from around his wrist and traces the edge of his cheek, as light as a feather. Bellamy freezes, and Clarke's fingertips stop a scant centimeter away from the corner of his lips.

      "Okay," Clarke says, her voice small. Her fingers move again, slipping along the curve of his lower lip. Bellamy thinks he should probably stand and run away, now, but he can't quite remember how to breathe, let alone move his legs. His lips part ever so slightly under Clarke's touch, and then her hand suddenly drops. "I'm going to go to sleep now."

      "Sounds like a plan," Bellamy responds in a strangled voice. Now that she's not touching his face anymore, standing up is a doable feat. Her fingers drag along his wrist and down his palms as the distance between them increases, and then her other hand joins the other against her chest, limp and pale. Bellamy pushes his hair away from his face with one hand, looks down at her and breathes out heavily. When Raven told him to find her, he didn't expect... He didn't expect _this_.

He and Clarke aren't _this_ with each other. They understand each other surprisingly well, but they've never gotten anywhere near emotional territory. Or the lip thing. That was weird. He is not nearly sober enough to think about this.

Bellamy wonders if she'll remember it in the morning, wonders if she'll resent that he saw this part of her. A pensive, vulnerable part.

      "Good night, Griffin," he says quietly, heading to the door. He turns off her light, shuts the door behind him, startles a little bit when he sees Dax leaning against the opposite wall with his arms crossed over his chest.

      "Everything good with Commander Griffin?" he asks.

Bellamy scrutinizes the other man for a moment, but whatever his subconscious is looking for in Dax's impassive face, he doesn't find it.

      "Yeah," he says quietly. Dax raises his shoulders up in a shrug, untangles his arms and steps away from the wall.

      "Cool," Dax says, already turning to walk away. 

      "Dax!" Bellamy calls out. He takes his time looking back, his face sullen and his chin held up in defiance. "If you have a problem with the chain of command on this ship, you should speak to one of us about it. We don't have time for passive-aggressive disrespect."

      "Half the time you skip around holding hands and pretending we're all one big happy family," Dax says lowly. "And the other half, you and Griffin can't wait to remind everyone who's in charge. So what's the truth, Blake?"

      "We're somewhere in the middle," Bellamy answers. "We live together, we take care of each other. That's what family does. But when we run into trouble - and we do, because smuggling is a dangerous life - then it comes down to Griffin and I to make the decisions that keep everyone safe. That's our responsibility. And it's your responsibility to listen to our decisions. Understood?"

      "Whatever," Dax mutters. He pauses, and then tacks on a sneered " _Commander_."

They stare each other down for a moment, neither willing to look away just yet. And then Dax breaks the silent showdown, deliberately turning away and walking down the hall in the slow, measured stroll of someone who knows exactly where they stand. Bellamy watches him go, glances back at Clarke's closed door, and silently lets out an exhausted exhale.

So much for  _unity._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> **THE PHOENIX, en route to UNKNOWN DESTINATIONS. Allegiance: Blake/Griffin.**

 

 

Jasper's not at all tired when Maya starts tugging at his sleeve to go to bed, but he gives in all the same. Their Unity Day party has wound down somewhat, but there are still a few enthusiastic cheers as he clambers onto the table and hollers for everyone's attention. First things first:

      "Maya and I are going to bed," Jasper proclaims. 

      "Get it!" is Octavia's answering shout. 

      "What I mean, is," Jasper corrects, "Good night. Good party. It's been such a good night. I propose a toast to Octavia! For starting the party!"

      "Damn right!" Octavia says from her spot tucked into Lincoln's side. "You're welcome, everyone!"

      "I'm not done," Jasper says. "More toasting. Also to Clarke, for kicking my ass at pong, and Bellamy, for letting it happen... where are they? They're missing my toast. It's a damn good toast."

      "They went to bed," Maya supplies. "Like we're planning to?"

      "Oh shit," Jasper says. "No way? The Commanders are sleeping together?"

      "No, not like that," Maya says, covering her laugh with one pale hand. Jasper nearly falls on his face trying to get off the table, but she hauls him back up and pulls one of his arms over her shoulder. 

      "Good night Jasper, Maya!" Monty hollers from the dashboard. Jasper makes an effort to wave in his general direction, but his limbs feel warm and loose and less responsive than usual. He's sure, however, that Monty won't begrudge him the lack of accuracy. Monty is a good friend. He'll understand it's the thought that counts.

      "Babe," Jasper says, turning his attention back to pressing matters. "Babe, you gotta let me in on the gossip. Clarke and Bellamy are a thing? How'd you find out about this? You're so smart. I have such a smart girlfriend."

      "They both went to their own beds," Maya explains patiently. "Because they're tired, and they need sleep. They're not a thing."

      "They're not?" Jasper whines, suddenly struck by the tragedy of the situation. "But Maya... They'd be such a... a _power_ _couple_. Get it? Because they're the Commanders."

      "I get it," Maya says, nudging him around the corner of another hallway. 

      "Of course you get it," Jasper says, twisting his head around to look at her better. He promptly trips on the edge of a doorway, but Maya balances him out and he keeps gazing at her. "You're so smart. Smartest girlfriend ever. Maya, you're the best. Have I told you today that you're the best?"

      "You might have mentioned it," she says, but her cheeks blush a shade of pink so pretty that he's momentarily overwhelmed by it.

      "Woah, woah, hold on," Jasper says, stopping dead in his tracks. 

      "Are you all right?" Maya asks anxiously, her hand hovering anxiously by his side.

      "Yeah, I just," he says. "Maya, you're _so_ great. You have such a nice face. It's all pink and stuff. I'm so lucky to be looking at you. Can I kiss you?"

Instead of responding, she meets him halfway, stretched up on the tips of her toes. Jasper fumbles blindly for her cheeks, cradling her face clumsily in his hands, and doesn't quite find her mouth on his first try. She steps in close enough that he can feel warmth radiating off her, and adjusts so at last, they're kissing. It's messy, it's soft, it's everything Jasper has ever dreamed of. 

      "Oh man," he murmurs against her lips. "You're the best girlfriend. Maya, I wanna dance again."

She giggles sweetly, wraps her arms tightly against his neck. 

      "All right," she says. "Let's dance again."

And they do, swaying gently on the spot, cheeks pressed together. Jasper closes his eyes against the harsh fluorescent lights, and dreams of the paintings Maya has told him about at night when she can't sleep, paintings described so vividly he feels like he could really be there, standing with her in green grasses, underneath blue skies. 

He hopes they get that someday, when they grow old and tired of the dangerous lives they lead.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can pry Harpoe out of my cold dead hands. This chapter's alternate title: the only experiences I have with parties and alcohol mostly involve weird emotional conversations and trying to take care of drunk people, so, like, that's what I wrote about. How to Party? I don't know. Too introverted for this shit. Next chapter: the crew deals with hangovers+democracy, and a polarizing character makes an offer they can't refuse. I'm v excited for the second arc and I hope you are too.
> 
> I LOVE EVERYONE WHO NOMINATED/VOTED FOR THIS FIC IN THE BFFA16. Thank you. You guys kind of made my year? So it seems fitting that this chapter was a bit of a celebration. <3
> 
> ALSO. IMPORTANT NOTE: I've seen some tumblr posts criticizing fics that erase Raven's disability, and rightly so! I haven't forgotten about that.


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